Good morning SES families,

By now, each family should have heard from their teacher in regard to the basic structure of the soft start, 9/2--9/11. Most of you should have heard from your child's core teacher already and scheduled a time for a family distanced home visit or digital meeting. With 530+ families across 9 grade levels, the soft start schedules across our school vary dramatically based on student age; because of this we asked our teachers to contact you last Friday and this week instead of sending a large communication from the office. From now on, you can expect a family newsletter every Friday that will contain important information, and we are also building a parent/guardian resource page on our website. The PPS website contains a lot of additional information about meal distribution, resources for technology assistance, and other COVID related, district-wide supports and announcements. 

Some elements of the final schedule at each grade are still in flux for two reasons: 1) as a staff we chose to build our final, distance learning schedules responsively, in a way that includes your input as a family. While doing this takes a little more time, we chose to invest this time because it is critical to have your input and to better understand individual family needs. Your child's final, synchronous group times (time on screen with the teacher) will come to you by 9/11/20, after your teacher has time to gather information from your family and create a classroom schedule that is as responsive as possible, 2) some details are still being worked out at the district level. This includes negotiation processes for contract amendments for certain work groups and other workload details for various employees. I do know that some families are hoping for concrete, full distance learning schedule information as soon as possible. While it may feel like you are getting information "slowly" right now, I assure you that this is an intentional investment in your family, one that allows us to create detailed, individual weekly schedules for students that honor your input. Thank you for your patience. This is a difficult and unprecedented time for our school, our state and our nation. Our main goal is to center your child and the needs of your family. We are using the soft start to gather input as quickly as we possibly can. 

Today I am able to share the general "architecture" of the full distance learning week for every student, K-8, beginning 9/14:

--The student day begins at 9:30 am, Monday--Friday. Your child will always start in a class meeting with their homeroom teacher, and this will always be at 9:30.

--The student day ends at 3:15 pm, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesdays are district wide meetings and professional development for all staff beginning at 1:30 pm. Your student may have asynchronous/independent work on Wednesdays from 1:30--3:15, but they will not be assigned to any learning with a teacher on screen after 1:30 pm on Wednesdays. 

--For every student, the full digital day will be a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous learning with a lunch period midday. Synchronous means that the student is on screen with a teacher, asynchronous means that students will be working on assignments independently, not on screen with a teacher or peers. Some synchronous learning will be in whole class format, but most of it will be done in smaller learning groups. Your teacher will share your child's specific, synchronous learning schedule and their assigned small groups with you by Friday, September 11. Again, the reason this will come to you at the end of the soft start is so we can get your input and best tailor your child's individual schedule to your family needs. 

--We know that many families have childcare needs and are working within your own, small communities and extended families to share childcare with others in a COVID safe way. The master schedule accounts for this; regardless of whether children are assigned to the same core teacher, the majority of the grade level schedule mirrors that of the other classrooms in your child's grade over the course of the week. This allows for students to be in digital school, side by side, usually working in the same subject area across all classrooms at that grade level. This was an important accommodation to work into our master, weekly schedule based on input from many families at Sunnyside. Another way to say this: even if your child is not in the same homeroom as another student in their grade level, the schedules will be similar and students will be able to work side by side on similar subjects during the week. 

--The teacher day at SES is from 8:30 am to 4:15 pm. Your teacher will provide you with their specific, weekly times available for family calls, meetings and connection as we move to full distance learning on 9/14. 

Lastly, next week our administrative team is offering optional, drop in sessions for parents/guardians. These sessions do not have a formal agenda--these are times where you can drop in with questions, concerns or anything that is coming up for you or your child. Again, these sessions are optional and we will be using Google meet as our digital platform. We are offering 2 sessions per grade band in the hopes that we can accommodate working families and the vast array of family schedule constraints. For digital privacy reasons, I am not putting the codes into this email as it will also be displayed on our school website later today. You can expect the codes for these meetings to come via email through your child's homeroom teacher by the end of this week. The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, 9/8, optional drop in for 1st/2nd grade families: 

session 1- 12:30--1:30 pm, session 2- 6:30-7:30 pm

Wednesday, 9/9, optional drop in for 3rd, 4th and 5th grade families:

session 1- 12:30--1:30 pm, session 2- 6:30-7:30 pm

Thursday, 9/10, optional drop in for 6th-8th grade families: 

session 1- 12:30-1:30 pm, session 2- 6:30-7:30 pm

Friday, 9/11, optional drop in for KG families:

session 1- 12:30-1:30 pm, session 2- *5:30 pm (earlier than the other grade levels to accommodate the weekend)

***digital codes for all meetings will come via email, through your child's homeroom teacher.

Thank you for your patience and support and I look forward to seeing you and your children. Today was our 6th grade orientation--it filled me with joy to see our students again, even if only from the neck up. 

Warmly,
Amy Kleiner, Principal
Alix Pickett, Assistant Principal