July 15, 2020
Dear Academy Families:
Thank you very much for your participation in last week’s Community Q and A sessions. The turnout and feedback we got were quite strong.
With this letter, we are sending everyone our extensive Return to School Plan, which covers many details of what school will look like when we come back to campus. It lays out much that we covered in our meetings last week, including a description of this fall’s two-track system (On-Campus and E-Learning).
We have worked under the assumption that our return to campus will be as scheduled on August 13. However, the current state of the pandemic in Florida and in our immediate area has worsened considerably, even since last week. We will continue to closely monitor the spread of the virus, hospitalizations, testing rates, and other information as we plan for the school year to come.
The safety of our community remains our highest value, and flexibility/ability to respond to current conditions in real time will be the most significant feature of our way forward. Thus, at this time, we are not optimistic that a return to campus for an August 13 start is the right way forward for our community of students, families, and teachers. We are assessing the idea of pushing the start date back by a week or two, deeper into August. If we do so, we will have to make up the requisite number of days over the course of the school year. If we choose this option, we will revise our school calendar accordingly.
Because of the fluidity of the situation, we will no longer ask for your formal binding choice of On-Campus or E-Learning by July 24. Instead, we would like to ask your non-binding opinion this week and will do so again before we ask for a formal choice. Attached to this communication is a two-question survey about your family’s current opinion. It is not binding. We very much want to know your thoughts, which will help to guide our planning. Thank you very much for participating.
We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and we will continue to keep you informed about the status of our plans. We are confident that we will be able to implement the extensive Return to School Plan we have created. We will do so when we feel it will be safe for our students, our teachers, and all of our families.
Sincerely,
Mark Heller
Head of School