An update from your public school system about reopening

Dear Families,

Throughout this past year, the well-being of our entire community has come first. This is why we have declined to reopen schools despite the fact that you are literally right now watching two strangers sit nineteen inches away from each other at a bar before taking public transit home. We are happy to report that after extensive bargaining between the teacher’s union, the district leadership, the school board, the Return-to-Schools Ad Hoc Committee, the Return-to-Schools Working Group, the Return-to-Schools Health Department Liaison, and the Return-to-Schools Budget, we have finally reached an agreement.

We fully intend to reopen schools someday.

As you may be aware, at the beginning of the pandemic, we made an Arrangement for Starting School (ASS) with the teacher’s union. The ASS prevented us from even thinking about the possibility of returning to school prior to the return to school agreement. For that reason, we cannot offer you information such as dates, times, or locations for reopening school, as this type of planning would have been a thought crime. However, our ASS does have the following parameters:

· We will be following a cohort model to allow for maximum covid safety. The cohorts are as follows: Pre-K, Elementary (K-5), Junior High Boys above 5 feet tall, High Schoolers in love triangles, historically underserved groups, extra-litigious overserved groups, learners with IEPs that are not currently being honored, rich kids whose parents finally defected to private school, and BiPOC, which is an acronym we recently learned and like to use at least once per email.

· We will be sending out a cohort survey within the next 5–16 school days to determine which cohort your student falls into and ask about your return to school cohort preferences. This survey will be conducted via touchtone phone during school hours. We will only be calling once. If you miss the call you will remain enrolled in the remote learning cohort.

· All eligible cohorts will be offered a minimum of one (1) hours of instruction per week. Depending on the needs of the school and/or cohort this may follow an a/a, b/b hybrid model, a hybrid model, a morning/afternoon hybrid model, a block schedule hybrid model, a…