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Good Morning Slinger Parents-
I hope you and your family are doing as well as possible during this unprecedented and challenging time. This email will serve many purposes, so I thank you in advance for patiently reading all of the information below. I am giving you the most current information I have today and ultimately will be asking your family to make some important decisions related to the educational services the District will be offering you for the 2020-2021 school year.
Please know that all of the updates and offerings below were brought to you after a great deal of discussion, thought, and planning based on information collected from our teaching staff, the parent survey, the Washington/Ozaukee County Blueprint for Reopening, and the DPI guidance and CDC guidance for schools. The offerings below are a combination of trying our best to serve our parents and students to the best of our ability while opening school as safely as possible with as much normalcy as possible. We understand and acknowledge that our plan will not satisfy everyone. We also understand and acknowledge there are numerous and widely varying viewpoints about the services schools should be offering at this time. I can assure you that we have given this our best effort and will continue to do so. The reopening plan presentation found here outlines a summary of all of the services we are offering and the manner in which we have enhanced the safety and sanitization around them for this upcoming school year.
Below are the services and programs being offered for the 2020-2021 school year with explanations so you can complete the Registration Survey in Family Access for each student. The survey closes at midnight on Friday, August 7th. If you need help logging into your Family Access account, please contact the help desk or call the District Office at 262-644-9615.
Educational Programming:
Our local parent survey data made it very clear that our parents desperately want and need to have their children back in school five days a week as soon as possible. A five day traditional school week with enhanced safety and sanitization will be our baseline offering for the 2020-2021 school year.
We also heard from our parents that despite the exceptional efforts made by our staff, virtual learning proved to be a challenge due to coordination of work schedules, supervision of learning, and varied and inconsistent modalities. For families that are uncomfortable returning to school full time, we are offering a full-time virtual online learning modality. 4K-5th grade will be able to access Lincoln Learning and 6th-12th grade students will be able to access Apex Learning. These products are aligned with Wisconsin State Standards, are easy to use and support, and can be accessed whenever students and families are ready to learn each day. We will also be staffing these programs with Slinger teachers so students and their parents have a local point of contact who will be available during the typical school hours of operation.
A hybrid option will also be made available where families can choose the parts of in-person learning that work for their family and parts of virtual learning that best fit their needs.
Please see this resource to read more about these three learning options before selecting the choice that best fits your family situation in Family Access. Once the results of the registration survey have been compiled on August 10th, families choosing the virtual services will be contacted by the school to register for classes.
Busing Services
We have been meeting with Riteway, our contracted bus service, throughout the spring and summer. They will be requiring masks of their drivers, will be doing a deep clean of their buses after the completion of each of their routes, and will be spacing students out as socially distant as possible. Where we need your input and assistance is related to the social distance Riteway aspires to maintain on our buses. We are respectfully asking families and students who have alternative means of transportation to school to take advantage of those means whenever possible so students whose only option for getting to school is the bus may do so as safely as possible.
Please let us know how reliant your family is on bus service by selecting the option that best describes your circumstance in Family Access. This information will help Riteway reconfigure routes and ridership.
Food Service
The emergency federal meals program is presently no longer in effect. School lunches will need to be purchased. In order to plan for staffing needs and supply needs, please let us know if your family will be participating in the school lunch program or if your family will be sending lunches with your child in the Family Access survey.
Face Coverings
Due to Executive Order #82 by Governor Evers, face coverings are now required in school for all students 5 years old or older. Please let us know if your child will need accommodations from the face covering Executive Order by completing the survey in Family Access. All information provided to the District will be kept strictly confidential. All students will be given the opportunity for breaks from face coverings as needed.
Thank you in advance for completing all of the information in Family Access as this information is critical in helping us complete our preparations for the first day of school on September 1st. The deadline for completion of this registration information is August 7th.
Please contact Superintendent Daren Sievers or Assistant Superintendent Jim Curler for any questions regarding these options. Please contact help@slingerschools.org for assistance signing into Family Access. Alternatively, please call the District Office at 262-644-9615 to reach Daren, Jim, or the Technology help desk.
Below is additional information related to the opening of school that we continue to work on:
Positive Tests for Students or Staff
Per Health Department guidelines, any student or staff member who tests positive for COVID-19 will be required to quarantine for 10 days and be asymptomatic for 24 hours.
Contact Tracing for Students or Staff
Per Health Department guidelines, any student or staff member who has had more than 15 minutes of contact (6 feet or less) with someone who tests positive will be recommended for quarantine for 14 days.
WIAA Update
Superintendents and Athletic Directors in the Northshore Conference will be meeting this week to further discuss the plans for Fall Sports.
As always, thanks for your support of Slinger Schools. We WILL get through this TOGETHER.
Daren Sievers
Slinger School District
"It's the little things that make a BIG difference."
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