Weekly email: March 18th

Good afternoon everyone, 

Thank you to SA families for completing the Return to School survey for April 26th. 

The deadline has now passed and we will assume that families who did not complete this, or respond to emails asking them to complete the survey, will have their students remote on April 26th. Please be aware that planning a safe return to school is our top priority and a logistical challenge. If you would like your student to switch from remote to in-person after April 26th, please be aware that you will have to wait up to four weeks for this to happen.

Please also be aware that if you are in-person, you are expected to be in school every day. You do not have the capacity to choose to take a day remote. Unless this is sanctioned by admin/ nurse, this will count as an unexcused absence. 

A working timeline for communicating out information about the 26th can be found below.  

Please also see below for upcoming events and dates to be aware of. As a reminder, April 2nd is the only 1/2 day we have coming up. Calendars published prior to the Hybrid model coming into effect will still have March 19th as a 1/2 day. To be clear, March 19th is not a 1/2 day.

Do email with any questions or concerns.

Best

Chris

St Patrick's Day Scavenger Hunt and Costume competition

The Student Council did a magnificent job working with CREW teams yesterday in putting on the above event. Photos are on social media and we are excited to take part in the next Student Council CREW event on April 14th. (You will have to watch the Friday Shout Video in order to see which CREW won the pizza party!!!)

Pool Testing

We are excited to have started our Pool Testing pilot at SA. This is a way of monitoring the health of the building at SA and identifying and acting on asymptomatic COVID as early as possible. We would like to encourage  as many students as possible to sign up and participate. The more people we have enrolled, the safer we can make our building for everyone. Please read this PDF for more info. Enrollment is open at any time.  Those who enroll by midnight by any Sunday will be included in the following week's pooled tests. Contact Nurse Hobbie or Nurse Elliott for further information

Planning our return to school on April 26th

We are currently working on schedules and would like to let you know our working timeline. Thank you for understanding that this may be adjusted according to any DESE publications/ mandates. We understand that change at any time is difficult and that there may well be a lot of anxiety around yet another change in the schedule this year. We hope that the dates below will enable students, families and staff to have time to assimilate new information and prepare for in person learning on April 26th.

• Return to school survey completion: March 17th
• Student Council survey to all students about a return on the 26th - March 24 - March 31st Hopes/ Fears/ Likes/ Dislikes (This will also help inform our SEL provision when we return)
• Staff feedback: Week of April 5th (Schedules and Building processes)
• Communication to students and families: Week of April 12th (schedules, locations and processes)

Additional supporting documents from DESE on the return can be found here

Out of State Travel

We are still in the grip of a pandemic, even if numbers appear to be moving in the right direction. Please remember to consider our travel guidelines for students and families traveling out of state or planning to travel out of state in the April break: Link

Nurse Updates

Athletics Updates

Prevention Needs Assessment Survey: March 31st

All parents will have received an email about the (PNAS) survey. Here is some brief information. 

Every two years, the Strategic Prevention Initiative for Families and Youth (SPIFFY) administers the Prevention Needs Assessment (PNA) Survey to students in Hampshire County. The PNA survey measures substance abuse and other problem behaviors; the factors that place students at risk for engaging in problem behaviors; and the factors that make students less likely to engage in problem behaviors. This year, the survey will also be asking students about the impact of COVID on their lives and learning.

This year, all Grades at Smith Academy will be participating in the survey on March 31st and your child will be asked to take the survey during CREW from 8:30-9am. The purpose of the survey is to gather the information needed to plan important prevention and intervention programs to combat such problems as alcohol and other drug use and violence in our schools and communities. It will also help us judge the effectiveness of our current prevention and intervention efforts.

For more information, please click on this Link

Please let me know by email before March 31st if you do not wish your child to participate in the SPIFFY survey.

Upcoming dates (A lot are still to be confirmed)

Q3: Deadline for redo/makeup work: March 26. 

Q3: grades close April 2 & Report cards issued: April 9th

Q4 starts: Monday 5th April

April 2nd - Good Friday: School ends at 11:50am

April Vacation: 19-23rd

April 26th - Grade 7-12 Schedule will change and the school day will run from 7:30-2pm

May 24th: Declamations deadline 

May 28th - Provisional final date for Grade 12 (To be confirmed)

May 22nd - Homecoming (To be confirmed) A rain date of May 23rd will also be confirmed, with the event shortened to 9 - 9:30am -Speeches only

Provisional Homecoming Schedule

June 2nd - Class day (To be confirmed)

June 4th - Graduation

June 11th -Underclass awards (To be confirmed)