| IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR FAMILIES: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 Dear Parents/Families: We can certainly appreciate the anxiety and worry that many of our families are working through on the eve of school opening this year. Reflected below is the most current information we have available and should serve to answer some of your questions. Rest assured, there will be further e-mails and updates as we get closer to school opening. You may have heard that the NLESD through the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development will hire an additional 70 substitute teachers to be school based to alleviate some of the difficulties we occasionally experience in finding substitutes for teachers who are ill or absent for other reasons. Beachy Cove has been allocated one of these teachers on a term contract that runs until December 22, 2020. (It may be extended beyond that date but that’s the date we have been given right now.). For us, that means that this teacher will be deployed to the classroom of the first teacher requiring a substitute each day; for those teachers who require a substitute beyond the first one, we will rely on telephone calls to our substitute list as per past practice. We have been working feverishly over recent days to iron out bussing arrangements for this fall in light of recent announcements about caps on school bus capacity. Just moments ago, I received an e-mail asking us to cease these preparations for the moment as the district is exploring ways and means of increasing capacity. Please stay tuned for further information as this process unfolds.We also understand that officials are working on a way to allow a family member to visit the school with their kindergarten learner on their all important first day of school. We’ll wait until this unfolds as well before we give specific directions about the first day for our kindergarten learners; however, please note that school will begin for our kindergarten learners at 10:30am on the first day of classes, September 9, 2020 – this delayed start is for the first day of classes only. School will open at 8:30am for all other grades with our doors opening at 8:10am. Finally, our class lists were completed way back in the spring and cannot be altered at this point given this late stage of planning. It would be an impossible task to accommodate requests for a specific teacher or classmate given the gazillion (is that even a word?) other details we have to work out to ensure a safe school start. |