MVCSD News Letter from Doug Tuetken 5/12

Maquoketa Valley Parents, As our abnormal school year begins to wind down, I wanted to reach out to provide an update on a couple of items as well as let you know what we are working on as we prepare for the eventual return of our students for this fall.

• On May 26^th and May 27^th from 7:30 – 10:30 a.m. and again from 3:30 – 6:30 p.m. parents may come to your child’s elementary school to pick up your children(s) items.  Please know that this will be a curbside pick-up so you do not need to enter the school. Staff members will bring your child’s items to your vehicle. A gentle reminder email will be sent a few days before the 26^th.
• When you do arrive at the building, we would truly appreciate that you also return your child’s computer, hotspot or library books that your student may have borrowed.  We will need to begin the process in June of cleaning and updating the machines and re-organizing our media centers.
• On May 18^th and 19^th our High School and Middle School students may come to the building to retrieve their personal items and also return their computer, hotspot, library books, classroom textbooks as well as any athletic or fine arts items/gear.  Mr. Osterhaus has already emailed all students a Google sign-up sheet to choose a time slot from either the 18^th or 19^th.
• If we are able to we will be offering a morning summer school program Monday through Thursday for our elementary children beginning the week of  July 13^th.  This program will run for 3 weeks.  Although we will be expanding the program to involve more students than we normally do, we will still organize this invite program similar to previous years.  We need to take care of our most vulnerable children first but to also meet the needs of all of our children, we will be offering  online summer school lessons taught by our teachers similar to what is currently being offered.  We will make available devices and/or hotspots if this is needed for online learning.  This gives all of our students an opportunity to stay engaged if a family so desires.  Additional details will be forthcoming.
• We have met with Delaware County Public Health to review and implement a whole host of protocols to ensure the safety of our students and staff.  This includes daily temperature checks, providing face masks for staff, practicing social distancing the best that we can, and disinfecting the classrooms daily.
• As a part of our meeting with Delaware County Public Health, we have discussed graduation and how we can offer a ceremony and still keep our students, parents and Board members safe. Based on the Governor’s proclamation and the data that Public Health is aware of, we all feel that an outside graduation ceremony may be the most practical and safe way to conduct this ceremony. A final decision to determine if we can hold a June 7^th ceremony at our football/track facility will be made in the very near future. If the data does not lend itself to a safe graduation on June 7^th, as we discussed previously, we will move graduation to July 5^th.
• Please know that this discussion also included prom.  A decision will be made later in the month if we are able to hold Prom on June 7^th.  If not, we are hoping to hold this event on July 3^rd.
• According to the Governor’s proclamation ALL school facilities are closed through June 1^st.  As difficult as this is, students are not to be using the inside of school facilities at this time.  In our discussions with Public Health our families can use the little league diamonds for family recreation,  not as an organized practice with other children.  We are hoping that within 2 weeks the Governor will make a decision regarding little leagues and interscholastic competitions and practices on school grounds.
• Our school calendar for the 20/21 school year will be modified.  We have built in additional student instructional time and we are working with our local association to determine our start date.  We all realize that our kids education was short changed this year due to the virus so all understand that the sooner we can start with our kids the better.  As soon as this is finished, I will get this information out to you for your summer planning.
• This past Friday we received a guidance document from the Department of Education regarding our “Return to Learn” plan.  As I have alluded to in previous emails, we will design plans to meet our student learning needs based on the challenges we may possibly face during the 2020 – 2021 school year.  These plans will include:
• Ensuring that required remote learning opportunities are available for all of our students;
• Planning to help our students catch-up for the learning they have missed during our closure;
• Integrating public health strategies into our buildings; and
• Enabling our schools to move between required on-site and remote learning as needed.

Our plan will need to be submitted to the Department of Education by July 1^st.  As we continue to work through this plan I will take the time to update you on our planning and implementation process.

• Finally, we will continue to offer our food service program during the summer months.  We anticipate that our program will be similar to what we are currently offering but there may be some changes based on Federal and State guidelines. We anticipate by the end of next week we will be communicating to you what our summer food service program will be offering.

As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to me or one of our staff members if you have any questions and please stay safe! Doug