Wines Update 7/27

Dear Wines Families,

I hope this message finds you all healthy and hopefully able to enjoy a “normal” summer as much as possible. I wanted to reach out today to provide a few updates regarding school in the fall.

As you probably know by now, upon Board approval later this week, AAPS will begin the school year 100% virtually. We hope that we will ultimately be able to have in person instruction when it is deemed safe. While this decision will impact our kids and families in many ways, our goal every day at Wines is to keep students safe and this decision aligns with that goal.

At some point after the Board meeting Wednesday, families will be sent more information along with the opportunity to choose from two plans—one where your child will come back to school when we re-open, and one where your child will remain virtual for at least the first semester. More detailed information on these plans can be found HERE.

There will certainly be many questions regarding these options and other issues related to our school closure. I will supply everyone with as much information as I have and we will likely plan various opportunities to engage together via Zoom in the weeks to come.

Many of you receiving this message were part of our community last year and have some experience with remote learning. While I cannot highlight enough the outstanding work our teachers and staff did after the abrupt closure in March, online learning had some shortcomings—most notably the lack of live synchronous learning. While the online learning we will experience this fall may continue to have limitations in comparison to “traditional” face to face instruction, the plan includes daily synchronous learning for all students in all subject areas. There will be a consistent platform (Schoology) and we hope a more streamlined and user-friendly experience. Our teachers are already taking professional development courses in order to be ready on day one!

Finally, some of you may be receiving this email more than once as I am using multiple address books to ensure that I am catching as many Wines families as possible. Once school starts, we will all be connected in a single place. In addition, there is a chance that you are receiving this email and your child is not attending Wines this year. If your child is not attending Wines and you have not already alerted us (you may still be receiving this email even if you did alert us), please respond to me to let me know and please include your child’s name and grade level for the fall.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me at any time.

Best,

David