The First Days of School

August 24, 2020

Dear KLSD Community,

At last week’s Board of Education meeting, we provided the following updates to our reopening plans:

First days of school: The first days of school for students – whether remote or in-person – are September 10 & 11. Students in grades K, 1, 6, 9, & 12 will attend in person (½ of K & 1 on 9/10, the other ½ on 9/11, Grades 6, 9, & 12 Cohort A on 9/10, Cohort B on 9/11). All other students in all other grades will connect with their teachers remotely on those two days. The daily schedules will be provided by the individual schools.

Cohorts: We are still finalizing the cohorts. We know this is important information for all families and we will publish the details as soon as possible.

Individual Requests: A number of families have reached out to ask if it’s possible to select a particular cohort and/or to ask if students can be prioritized for 4 days of in-person learning based on family situations. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate these individual requests.

Hybrid Model: The hybrid model will begin for all students on Monday, September 14, with Cohort A attending in-person and Cohort B learning remotely. The week will look as follows:

Monday 9/14	Tuesday 9/15	Wednesday 9/16	Thursday 9/17	Friday 9/18
Cohort A in school	Cohort A in school	All students learn remotely	Cohort B in school	Cohort B in school
Cohort B at home	Cohort B at home		Cohort A at home	Cohort A at home

Holiday Weeks: On a Monday holiday week, such as the week of 9/28, typically you can expect the schedule to look as follows:

Monday 9/28	Tuesday 9/29	Wednesday 9/30	Thursday 10/1	Friday 10/2
Schools Closed Yom Kippur	Cohort A in school	Cohort A in school	Cohort B in school	Cohort B in school
	Cohort B at home	Cohort B at home	Cohort A at home	Cohort A at home

Arrival/Dismissal: In order to welcome and dismiss students as safely as possible each day, we’re making the following adjustments. At elementary schools, buses will pick-up students and deliver them to school at the regular time. Families who are driving to school will be asked to drop their students shortly after the buses (and pick them up shortly before buses in the afternoon). The individual schools will send more specific information in the coming days. At middle and high school, buses will pick up students slightly earlier than last year. At both schools, multiple entrances are being used to more safely space students at arrival. Again, more detail will be provided by the individual schools in the coming days.

Full Remote Option: Our most recent survey tells us that a little more than 300 students may be staying home full-time when school begins. We’re now determining if these numbers allow us to dedicate a teacher per grade level (at elementary school) to the creation of fully remote classes. We believe this will allow us to more closely approximate the learning experience of those students who will split their learning time between school and home. At middle and high school, due to the multiple different classes per day for each student, it will not be possible to create fully remote classes with dedicated teachers. Secondary students who stay home full-time will videoconference in to those same portions of classes that will be available to those students who are home in the hybrid model.

Important Reminders & Notes: This Thursday, August 27, marks 14 days prior to the first day of school for many students (see above). Please remember that our daily screening tool will ask families if they have traveled in the past 14 days to any of the States or Countries on the NYS Travel Advisory list. If the answer is yes, your child must stay home. Opening schools this September and keeping them open will require a collective community effort as never before.

And finally, at the very end of last week, all schools in our region (and across the State) received a heads-up from the folks who provide our broadband internet access. While they are hopeful that the bandwidth in schools will support the quantity of remote access we’re about to need, they will not be certain until all teachers and students are back in school across NYS. At KLSD, we’ve increased our bandwidth over the summer and will do everything we can to implement remote learning smoothly.

As I told our Board last Thursday, in 2020, we are all rookies. None of us, not our students, our teachers, our administrators, nor our entire staff have ever approached a school year quite like this one. It seems likely that there will continue to be last minute adjustments and challenges. We will model for and with our students the ability to be flexible, creative, and positive in the face of this ever shifting landscape.

Be safe and be well,

Andrew Selesnick, Superintendent of Schools