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A Message From Mr. Gardner:
Dear Alma Families,
We hope you are all healthy and safe during this incredibly challenging school year. After giving it a lot of consideration, we’ve decided that Kindergarten and First Grade will not return for in-person instruction until at least after Winter Break.
We know that this will come as a disappointment to many of you. Please know that we are not making this decision lightly. There are a number of factors that have contributed to postponing additional in-person learning. We are still confident our team is ready to provide in-person instruction to our younger scholars safely and effectively. Likewise we know that many of our families with young kids are acutely struggling with the demands of having their kids at home. At the same time, the recent and continued rise of COVID cases in our area, coupled with the likely spread of the virus with the holidays, means that any further move to reopen at this point would have to be revisited on a weekly basis. While we want our younger scholars and families to have the stability that in-person instruction brings, we also want to avoid the additional disruption that rising rates and subsequent closures would cause for our school community.
Thank you for all of your patience and hard work as we all navigate remote learning. Pausing on further reopening until after winter break gives us the time to invest even more into our remote program. All of our scholars, including our youngest scholars, can and will master grade level content and skills during this time. We are thrilled to have such dedicated and hard working scholars and families! We are so proud that our daily attendance across both campuses is consistently above 93%. This is critically important for our scholars’ learning, so thank you for everything you are doing at home to make remote learning a priority and to support your scholars in building healthy academic habits, even from home.
As you may have seen in the news last week, New Bedford’s daily new cases of COVID-19 increased from 10.0 cases per 100,000 to 12.2 cases per 100,000. This is concerning. Please continue to wear your mask and practice social distancing unless you are with a member of your immediate household to help protect our community!
It is important for all families to understand what data we are using to make these challenging decisions regarding our reopening and your scholar’s learning model. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health shares data on a weekly basis. Data is released on Wednesday evenings at 6 pm on this website. We are committed to supporting our scholars and families. If there are any additional concerns you may have, please reach out to your campus to ask for support. We are here to help.
In service,
Will Gardner, Executive Director