Dear Parents;

Once again I want to thank you for  your patience and flexibility in regards to the situation we are in in regards to the education of your children.
I have tried to keep the lines of communication open by giving you my contact information. I appreciate the support as well as the concerns that some of you have contacted me with. I assure you we will do the best we can do in order to maintain the safety of your child as well to continue the education of our students. I realize the plan we have created is not one that satisfies all of you and I am sorry for that.

Here are some pieces of important information for you as we move forward in the next few days:
1. We have restored power to parts of the school as of late last night. There still is no heat and no water.
2. A clean up crew from First General Services will be on scene today to begin some of the water clean up throughout the school. Some areas are worse than others.
3. At this point we do not have plans for a parent meeting but all of you are free to contact me in regards to questions you have.
4. Depending on how clean up goes today and tomorrow, there is hope to let parents/students in the building late Monday morning to retrieve items from areas we can access at the school. A definite time will be determined by myself and the supervisor of facilities in the near future and communicated to you.
5. In regards to relocating our students. Here is some info:

  • Students who are normally bussed to school will be picked up approximately 15-20 minutes earlier than usual. The superintendent in charge of transportation will be formulating that plan with the bus drivers and it will be relayed to you by them.
  • All busses will congregate at the school by 8:15 am. Students who live in the village will also meet there at that time.
  • Three busses will depart to Spruce Home and four busses will depart to PA Carlton. We will arrange busses by grades.  Teachers will be accompanying students on the busses for the first few days to help students feel more at ease as they arrive at their new classrooms.
  • After school, busses will depart from Spruce Home and PA Carlton at 3:20. They will meet in the MP school parking lot at 3:45. They will then transfer to their normal bus route to depart for home.

6. As far as schooling. We are going to operate in the fashion of “a school within a school”. We are just using their building.  What this means is that our students will be in class with their regular classmates being taught by their regular teachers. We will keep our own school day schedule as much as possible.

  • Spruce Home is equipping us with four wonderful classrooms and is accommodating us in several ways.
  • PA Carlton is equipping us with 10 classrooms that are located in a deserted area of the school. We will basically be by ourselves. Carlton is also giving us our own gym to run our PED classes and our extra curricular teams. Carlton is also giving us space in its construction area, visual art area, band area and home ec areas to continue our specialty work in.
  • We will have an administrator in Spruce Home (Mr. Letkeman) and an administrator in Carlton (Mr. Hazzard). We will also have secretaries in each building as well.
  • We will be providing diligent supervision of our students in both buildings. In PA Carlton, our students will be given strict guidelines in regards to breaks, noon hours and spares. Things such as boundary areas, hallway passes and places they can be and cannot be will be put in place.

 

7.  Communication – we will have a phone system put in place for both schools in order for you to contact our “school within a school”. We will be able to take messages and deliver them to staff and students just as we did in Meath Park.

I hope this clears up a few things. When we first bus our students to both locations on Wednesday morning we will have an assembly with our students to discuss our new setting.

In the meantime, feel free to contact me with any other questions you may have. I will stay in touch in regards to the timeline for Monday.

Thanks,

Mr. Hazzard/Mr. Letkeman