Fenwick Families,
Preparing for this school year has been far more complicated and time-consuming than any previous year. We are preparing for something no one has ever prepared for before. Because this is all new, we ask our families to remain flexible and understanding as we continue to figure this out. The purpose of this letter is to communicate several changes to our reopening plan.
Lunches
We have re-evaluated our approach to lunches while we are engaging in our hybrid approach to learning. After listening to faculty, staff and families, we have adjusted our plan based on their concerns.
We are moving from one 25 minute lunch period to two 25 minute lunch periods. We have already split the school in half with our A Days and our B Days. We will also split our school in half each day to facilitate lunch. We will have lunch 1 and lunch 2.
Lunch 1 will begin at 11:05 and end at 11:30. Lunch 2 will begin at 11:35 and end at noon.
We will utilize our classrooms in the main classroom building for our lunches. The windows in these classrooms open and a new exhaust system has been installed in this building to increase ventilation and airflow. Each classroom is already set up for social distancing with an average of about 50% of capacity per classroom. This new approach to lunch will reduce capacity during lunch by an additional 33%.
While Lunch 1 is taking place, those that are not in lunch will have designated places they must go for a study hall. Each group will switch places for the second lunch.
As a result, all classes will be 40 minutes long.
Students will be assigned to rooms for lunch. We will not make any special accommodations
Freshmen
Putting together our schedule for the school year was more complicated than we could have ever imagined. Because of this, adjustments have been made. We want to make sure that we do things well. There are two changes to our approach with freshmen.
Having freshman in the building on their “eLearning days”
When we originally made our plan for this year, it was our hope to be able to have some freshmen in school on what would normally be their remote learning day. This no longer looks like a possibility, at least in the very near future.
As the days have passed and things have changed, we have a need for all of the large spaces in the building for the 500-600 students that will be in school on that day. The rooms that we thought would be available to accommodate extra freshmen are all being used for the students that are scheduled to be in the building on that day. As we examined our schedule and how we could deliver instruction in the most effective way possible while maintaining guidelines by the department of public health, it has become apparent that additional students in the building are not possible at this time.
Freshmen Fridays
We are still in the process of hiring the additional instructional help needed to facilitate our Freshmen only Friday classes. When we start with this plan, we want to be sure that we are doing it well. For the first two Fridays, all students will be eLearning. Our Freshmen Friday program will begin on Friday, September 18th.
Also, please be aware that the Freshmen Friday classes will only take place if we have a five day school week. When we have four day weeks, all students will be on the typical rotation of two days in school and two days eLearning.
Plan for full remote learning
In an effort to be fully prepared for anything, we have developed a plan if we should need to return to a fully remote learning plan. The plan provides for slightly more “virtually face time” than students are receiving “in-person facetime” during hybrid. It also tries to minimize the time a student spends passively learning in front of a screen. Below are scheduled virtual meeting times. The only variation on these times might occur if a student has a lab before or after the scheduled lunch break or at the beginning or end of the day. Those scheduling exceptions will be communicated by the science teacher.
