Dear EVCS Families,

If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, please take a moment to fill out our survey on remote learning at EVCS. We are planning professional learning for all of our staff to further develop our remote teaching practices together, so it is important for us to hear from you about how things are going, what is working well for your child and what needs to be improved. There are separate pathways in the survey for blended learning students and fully remote students, and though it’s an anonymous survey we ask that you identify your child’s grade level so we can understand the survey data as it relates to each group of students and their unique experiences. If you have more than one student at EVCS please fill out a survey for each of them separately, but please fill out only one survey for each student in the family. Thanks so much for your feedback and support. The survey will close on Friday afternoon.

A note about the daily emails from the Situation Room – These emails are automatically generated and scheduled to go out every day to all parents who have signed up for a MyStudent account whenever there is a confirmed case within our community. I know that the emails are confusing and redundant. Please know that whenever there is a confirmed case and/or a classroom or building closure I will also email directly to all families to explain in direct terms what is happening and what to expect, and if anything is ever unclear or confusing you can contact me any time for more information. Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Cohort D families – tomorrow is Wednesday, which means the lending library will be open from 11:30 – 1:00. Come get leveled books for your kids to read independently, or books to read together. We will also have extra materials to refresh your child’s supply kit, including crayons, markers, pencils, notebooks, etc. If your schedule allows please bring your kids with you. It’s so great to see our Cohort D students who we miss so much, and I think it’s helpful for them to get to visit school, albeit briefly and outside. We’ll be set up outside on the sidewalk in front of the schoolyard gate.

An update on classroom air quality and climate control – We received the air purifiers we requested from the DOE, so every classroom now as at least one air purifier in it! This is great news as it now allows us to open the windows slightly less-wide and still have more than adequate ventilation and good quality air in the classrooms. And our wonderful Parents Association purchased oil-filled space heaters for every classroom at EVCS, so that will be a big help in making our rooms a more comfortable temperature for our students and staff to work in each day. It’s still a good idea to send your child in with layers, but we’re making progress. Thanks to the PA for that generous donation.

I hope everyone is staying healthy and sane. Hang in there folks!

Yours,
Bradley

Dear EVCS Families,

I hope you had a restful and joyous holiday, and that your new year is starting out in good health. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and want to remind everyone that school begins again tomorrow for remote and blended learning. Tomorrow will be an A day for in-person learning.

Please note that although the New York State guidelines for quarantining after travel or exposure to an individual who has tested positive were recently updated to be consistent with CDC guidelines, the NYCDOE guidelines currently remain as they were before the break. In short:

Families of students coming in person must fill out the health screener before entering the building every single day, certifying that all of the criteria for safely attending in-person are met. We will be taking absolutely every precaution in the building and will remain hypervigilant in following our safety protocols, but we need your cooperation to keep everyone as safe as possible.

Many thanks,

Bradley

Dear EVCS Families,

This morning we shared the latest School-Wide Morning Meeting with our students, including a beautiful presentation of the song Peace, which Terry stitched together and synched up from dozens of individual contributions (thank you Terry!). I’ve really missed our IRL (in the parlance of our tweens) School-Wide Morning Meetings and I really missed gathering in the auditorium for our annual Festival of Lights winter celebration this year. These pre-recorded videos may not be a substitute for the real thing, but hopefully they can provide some of that SWMM/FOL feeling until we can all be together again. If your child missed it this morning, or if you would like to watch it with your kids, you can find it here.

I sincerely hope that all of our families have a wonderful and safe holiday, and that you find time to relax, restore and enjoy. Here’s to a new year and a renewed sense of hope!

Yours,

Bradley

Dear EVCS Blended Learning Families,

We are so pleased to have our kids back in the building for in-person learning – and we really hope to keep it going without interruption for the foreseeable future. Given the slow but steady rise in test positivity rate in New York City we are doubling down on all of the safety measures we have in place at the school, and we are asking for your partnership in order to keep each other safe and keep our school building open.

One of the most important things we ask that you do every day is to fill out the daily health screening for your child. The screening consists of four questions:

We recommend you add this link to your home screen on your phone to make it simple to access in the morning. I know it becomes tedious to fill out the screening every day and our tendency is to rush through and habitually answer “no” to all of the questions, but please consider all of these questions carefully and thoughtfully each and every day. Our practice has been to take every child’s temperature before entering the building, but as the weather has gotten colder we are noticing that our contactless thermometers are becoming increasingly unreliable, so please check your child’s temperature and be extra vigilant in looking out for any potential symptoms before sending your child to school in the morning.

Last month we arranged our schedules to allow for every class to eat lunch outside every day, either in the schoolyard or in the Tree of Knowing Garden. Since lunch is the one time of the day when all of our students need to take their masks off, we want to make sure that we are doing this in the safest possible way, and outside is just safer than inside. Al fresco dining has been going great, but it’s getting cold out there, so please make sure to bundle your child up!

One more cold weather related item. Good ventilation is an essential part of our school-wide plan for keeping our students and staff safe, and so it is necessary to keep windows open throughout the day. This sometimes means that our classrooms can get a bit chilly, especially on the lower floors. We are working with our custodians to keep the heat pumping through the radiators all day long, and we have requested air purifiers for every classroom so we can open the windows slightly-less-wide. But please send your child in with layers, which you may consider leaving in the classroom for when they need it. I myself have adopted a Mister Rogers routine of throwing on a cardigan when I arrive at my office in the morning. 😉

Finally, as you know, all schools now have random COVID testing every week, and each time the testing staff comes we will test approximately 20 % of our students. All blended learning students are required to have signed consent from their parents to be tested – and if you previously gave consent the DOE is asking that you update your consent form to reflect the more frequent testing. We had testing in our school yesterday morning, and the parents all of the students who were tested have already been notified and should be receiving the lab results within the next day.

Thanks so much for trusting us with your children’s safety – we consider it the absolute most important thing – and than you for your partnership in keeping everyone in our community safe.

Yours,
Bradley