Dear Vanguard Families,
Welcome to the 2021-22 school year! We hope you enjoyed time with your families and friends this summer while remaining safe and healthy.
The Vanguard School Health & Safety Plan and Guidelines (HSP) and the Student/Family Covid-19 Decision Tree have been updated and are now available to view on our website. You can access them by clicking here. Please take a few minutes to review the new, reader-friendly HSP. We will notify you any time our HSP is revised.
Please note a few key takeaways:
As of this writing, we will offer in-school learning only. We hope that we will not need to return to remote instruction. However, we are prepared to do so should COVID-19 transmission levels become too high to safely instruct on campus.
When we return to school on September 8, 2021, all students and staff will be required to wear masks when indoors. Masks are required indoors regardless of vaccination status. This also applies while riding on school district transportation and Vanguard School vans.
IEP meetings will be held virtually via Zoom.
Students will eat lunch in classrooms or outdoors. The lunch protocol will remain the same as last school year. We ask that you order through the Quick Link on the Vanguard School website homepage in advance. You may also access the lunch order form by clicking here.
If your child has any signs or symptoms of illness, please keep your child home. Report your child’s absence to the program office as usual, AND report a COVID-related (displaying COVID symptoms or positive for COVID) absence to our COVID Case Managers at: casemanagers@vfes.net.
Like last year, we will offer all students routine COVID testing by our school nurses. Testing is voluntary for students, but strongly encouraged. Our nurses have been trained to offer testing through our collaboration with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). For us to test your child, you must complete the following steps:
1. Click here to access the consent form.
2. Complete and sign the consent form. Have your child sign it also if he or she is 18 or older.
3. Upload the signed consent form to the Parent Portal (click here to locate the Parent Portal).
4. Preregister your child to receive testing:
a. Go to: https://register.pennrapidtest.org/
b. Complete the form with your child’s name, address, sex, and ethnicity but enter your email and cell number. Your child’s test results will be sent to the email and cell number that you enter within hours of testing.
c. Once you submit your information, you will receive a unique QR code for your child.
d. You must save the QR code to your computer and upload it to the Parent Portal. We recommend you give one of the copies to your child so that your child can show it to the tester when tested. We cannot test your child without the QR Code.
We encourage all families to provide consent for on-site testing as part of our mitigation efforts.
Finally, please be sure that you have completed and uploaded all back-to-school forms in the Achieve Parent Portal before the first day of school.
We are looking forward to your child(ren) being back on campus on Wednesday, September 8!
Kindly,
Lisa Wood M.Ed.
Director of Education
Darren G. Levin, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Services
Be Well,
Lisa Wood
Director of Education
Darren G. Levin, Ph.D.
Director of Clinical Services
