USD 235 Parents/Guardians:
This afternoon most of received news that the Bourbon County Health Department issued a Stay At Home Order that will go into effect at 11:59 PM on Friday, March 27. After learning of this order I contacted Rebecca Johnson, Health Officer, of Bourbon County.
After our communication I have learned that both school districts in Bourbon County (USD 234 Fort Scott and USD 235 Uniontown) have been given permission to proceed with our Food Service plans for the week of March 30 – April 3. For Uniontown USD 235 that means serving meals on both Tuesday, March 31 and Thursday, April 2.
Please see our Facebook post on the morning of March 26 for more details or go to the following link on our website. https://www.uniontown235.org/article/220059?org=uniontown-usd-235
I will continue to communicate with the Bourbon County Health Department as it relates to the Stay At Home Order. I will communicate with all of you what I find out in regard to the impact on our school community.
I would like to remind all Uniontown Eagles that the important thing to remember, especially now, is in every challenge, there is opportunity. How we respond to challenges now will determine our level of success later. This doesn’t just apply to individuals but to organizations and families as well.
I will continue to communicate frequently with our students, parents, and patrons of Uniontown USD 235 to make you aware of district plans going forward. I know these posts will not answer every question, but we are doing our best to get this information out to everyone through multiple outlets. Not everyone in our district has access to the internet and may not have a social media account on either Facebook or Twitter. If you know of people in this category, please help us get information to them or email me at bhoward@uniontown235.org and we will make sure to get this information in their hands.
At this time, we have no immediate plans to bring students back into our buildings in small group settings. We will be proceeding in planning our Continuous Learning Plan during March 30 through April 3 with our staff by focusing on 1) Online learning opportunities using video conferencing and 2) Packet learning. We will provide more details to our parents/guardians when the plan is created. We will not be ready to put our plan in place until Monday, April 6, at the earliest. We will also ease into our plan.
We appreciate your willingness to work together to make this the best experience possible for your child(ren).
Our building principals are still working with the Bourbon County Health Department to see if we can create a plan that would allow us to return all personal belongings to our students. Once we receive word on whether we can allow this or not we will place that information on our website, Facebook account, and Twitter account.
Our Administration Team will be meeting with our Technology Staff on Friday, March 27 to continue to prepare for working with all of our teachers beginning on Monday, March 30.
The week of Monday, March 30 through April 3 our district staff will be hard at work to create the USD 235 Continuous Learning Plan.
Our thoughts concerning the USD 235 Continuous Learning Plan:
- We will be focusing on essential learning and essential outcomes for students – “Less is More”.
- We will be emphasizing relationships in this new learning environment.
- Our decisions must support all populations of students.
- We will establish a consistent and agreed upon framework of expectations, communication models and practices that all stakeholders share.
- We will be using 1-2 platforms of learning for all students. We simply can’t have every person using their own platforms. This would be confusing for students and parents alike.
- The guidance we received has recommendations on time for students to spend learning each day. We will be using these recommendations. They are 30 minutes for Pre-K; 45 minutes for KG and 1st grade; 60 minutes for 2nd and 3rd grade; 90 minutes for 4th and 5th grade; and 30 minutes per teacher in 6th through 12th grade. (3 hours maximum in a day.) These will be maximum minutes and doesn’t mean that it will even be daily.
- Continuous Learning will not be hours of screen time for students and parents.
- We will not just be making copies of worksheets and sending them home. A) Online Learning and B) Packet Learning.
I have placed several items on our social media platforms this afternoon in my opinion that are humorous. I think it is more important now than ever to maintain our level of humor. I will share some of that within this letter for those of you who may not have Facebook or Twitter.
Parents and Grandparents will understand this one...
Sorry guys, can't help you with this one...
Be safe Eagles!
Thank you and God Bless,
Bret Howard, Superintendent Uniontown USD 235