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Hello Red Fox Families,
Thank you to everyone who was able to participate in our first community day of the 2020-21 school year, on August 1st. Parents, faculty and students helped to clean up our garden space, organize our books, assemble furniture and clean our classrooms. We still have more to do, but this was an excellent start! We have blocked off Wednesday, August 26th and Thursday, August 27th as days when we would love some more help with projects in the school. As we get closer to those dates, a sign up sheet will be circulated. Immunization/Health Records: Please upload your student’s health records to TADS. We need to have everyone’s paperwork in the system before the first day of school. If you have any questions with the process please call the TADS family support line: 800-477-8237 Academic Calendar: Please find the updated academic calendar attached to this email. Governor Scott put out an executive order that all schools public and independent would open for the first day of school on Tuesday, September 8th. So some of our dates in September have been moved back by a week. So please take a look. Community Handbook: Please find the school handbook attached as well. This is a great guide for all our families to become familiar with our school policies and expectations. You will see that a health pledge has been added to the handbook this year. At the end of the handbook is a signature page that indicates you have read and agree to follow the guidelines of our school community. Please print out and sign this signature page and bring it with you on the first day of school. That along with a green light on the health check will be the entrance ticket to school. Welcome and Welcome Back Picnic: Every year our Parents Association coordinates many activities for our community. Along with our community days, the welcome back picnic is the first of these events. You will be receiving information about the picnic from Bethany Jenkins. Typically this is a potluck event but as you will see with many things this year, we are reinventing how we do it. Think of the picnic as a camping ground, or the circles they have drawn in the lawn of Central Park! We will have our spots for our families’ picnics, but we will be able to socialize and meet each other from a safe distance. Family-Teacher Lunch/Brunch Dates: Please be on the lookout for a sign up sheet being sent by Alley and Sarah. Again another Red Fox tradition of family-teacher dinners, has been altered this year. Every year our teachers enjoy the opportunity to have individual time with each family prior to the first day of school by sharing a meal together. This year the meal will still be shared but outside at our school. This has the advantage of also being a time when the parents and students can tour their classroom and get to know the Red Fox space. Make sure to sign up! This is an invaluable opportunity for families and students to connect with our teachers. Assistant Teacher: This year we are very excited that Taheem is joining us as an assistant teacher. Some of you may remember meeting Taheem at the community day. He was part of the Johnston family team and was a huge help that day. Taheem is currently a junior in college and studying early education. Sometimes this pandemic has afforded us creative opportunities. And one of those is the fact that Taheem will be attending school remotely. So we are fortunate enough to have him here in Vermont and the newest member of the Red Fox team. Taheem will be one of the first people to greet our students as they start their day, checking them in with the health check app. Making sure everyone has taken their temperature at home and answered the health questions. He will then be assisting Sarah and Alley throughout the morning. Welcome Taheem! I realize that I have bombarded our community with a lot of information in this newsletter. So please take your time to jot down important dates, print out the attached calendar and read our Community Handbook. I look forward to seeing everyone at our welcome back picnic. |
Sincerely, MaryBeth |
Hello Red Fox Families!
I was so happy to connect with many of you at our first summer community meeting last Thursday, July 2nd. Communication is our most important tool in preparing for our upcoming school year. As always, I am happy to speak with you or email with any family directly. But for your planning, here are the upcoming summer dates that I will be reaching out to our whole community: Newsletter Emails: July 24th, August 7th, August 21st Community Meetings via zoom at 6pm:July 29th, August 19th Our Welcome Back Potluckis scheduled for August 25th from 5-6:30pm. As we get closer to that date, our PA co-chairs, Danielle and Nori will be in contact with how we will be running this event. As with everything we are planning, patience and flexibility will be key. |
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Updates and Information:
Enrollment As of Monday the Owls’ classroom has students actively on a waitlist. We still have some spots open in the Eagles but I am very busy fielding new inquiries every week. Healthcare Partnership I am very pleased to announce a new partnership that Red Fox will have with Manchester Medical Center. We will be contracting with MMC as our school health care coordinators and support this year. MMC nurses, doctors and paramedics will be a phone call away and 10 minute drive from us for anything from a bug bite, playground accident to helping us manage COVID care. I will send out more specific information in a separate email. But I am extremely excited about this partnership, not only during this time of high concern regarding COVID but also in general for the overall health and care of our students and faculty. Lunch We have loved being a part of the Long Trail lunch program. This year Long Trail will not be offering a lunch program. So on our list to prepare for school this year, families will need to add making lunches. We look forward to the return of the program next year. Buses Long Trail will not be running their buses for the first weeks of their school year. They have not determined how they will be restarting the bussing program in September. The BRSU has also not released it’s plan for bussing this year. So until we hear back from LTS and the BRSU, it would be prudent for families to make transportation plans for the first month of school. We will work on connecting families from the same towns or general areas who are interested in carpooling. Family Contract with our Community A Health Commitment Letter will be added to our community handbook this year. Every family will receive a copy prior to school opening. On the first day of school every family will be required to bring in the signature page indicating that you have read and agree to the policies of the Red Fox Community School family handbook. Daily Health Checks As I mentioned in our community meeting, the 1st and most important gate for maintaining our communities health is at your home. At home a daily health check of your student will be required. If a student is not feeling well, overtired, sniffles, sore throat, cough, fever, tight chest, they must stay home. Families must take a student’s temperature before leaving the house for school. A 2 degree change from someone’s regular temperature is considered a fever. So if your child’s temperature is typically 97.8 then 99.8 is a fever. Manchester Medical Center will be giving us daily questions that must be asked at home and then will be asked again as we welcome our students into school everyday. We are waiting on some information from Long Trail regarding an app that families will log temperatures in at home. If we use the app each family will receive a bluetooth thermometer for individual homes. If the app is cost prohibitive, we will set up an alternate way for families to log in their student temperatures with school in the morning. Temperature taking at home will cut down on our staggered arrival times and wait for entering school at the beginning of the day. Most importantly it informs a family before coming all the way to school, if they should be keeping their child home that day. The daily check must be done at home and logged in with the school before arrival at school. A student will not be admitted into the building without a reported temperature for that day. We will be able to do the occasional morning check for someone who has forgotten, but it will not be the daily process. We will have a clear list of health routines that we will be asking every family to commit to, as well as the protocols that we will be using at school everyday. Masks Faculty will be wearing masks or full shields throughout the day when inside the building. Students will be required to bring a mask to school. They will not be required to wear the mask all the time. However, an occasion may arise where they will be working in close proximity with another student or faculty, and they would be asked to put the mask on. If this is uncomfortable or challenging for the student an alternative will be given to the student. Although we will be self-contained in our classrooms. We also need to have masks in case a student needs to go into a Long Trail space. LTS is requiring masks for everyone all the time. Planning for Back to School at Home
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I know that this is a lot of information and that this is just the beginning of developing all of our routines and protocols for safely opening our school on September 1st. Please make sure to attend our next zoom community meeting at the end of July. As time moves forward the picture is starting to come into play, but it will remain a moving target. The best part of all the work Sarah, Alley and myself have been doing over the summer has been our teamwork. I am very proud of our faculty and our parents who have all been stepping up to work together. I am very grateful for our school community. | |
Sincerly, MaryBeth |
Happy Summer!
I hope you have been enjoying this wonderful weather and spending time outside! This is my first official note for the 2020-21 academic school year. I am so grateful to say welcome and welcome back to all our Red Fox families! New Space! Calendar COVID-19 |
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Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/ |
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I look forward to seeing you all on July 2nd. I will be sending out notes throughout the summer to keep our community informed about our opening of school. If you have any questions, prior to our meeting on the 2nd, please send me an email at marybeth@redfoxschool.org . | |
Sincerely, MaryBeth |