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SAISD extends school closure through April 24 - March 24, 2020
03/24/2020
Dear SAISD Staff:

Today, for the safety of our students and staff, the District made the decision to extend our closure until Friday, April 24. 

Yesterday, city and county officials issued a stay-at-home directive to protect all of us who live in this community from the spread of COVID-19. The directive goes into effect tonight just before midnight. As a school district, we are exempt from this directive, but in the spirit of compliance and out of an abundance of caution for our employees, we will begin providing as many services remotely as possible and with as few staff members as possible.

By the end of this week, you will receive more details of the District’s remote work plan, as well as for the plan to limit the number of hours essential employees are required to report to a work site. We also will be sharing with you additional information on operational and safety protocols for when staff need to report in person.

It’s important to know that we will continue to provide the following essential services:

• During these next four weeks, we will pour our hearts into making students’ remote learning come alive in our newly created Digital Playground. And a month from now, we hope to continue to engage them again in a physical classroom, as well as our robust digital one. Moving forward, every student will continue their studies in both the physical and virtual environments to prepare them best for the world that awaits them upon graduation.

• This week we began deploying the 17,000 devices we already had on hand to students throughout our District who expressed a need for them. This will continue – we have committed to acquiring an additional 30,000 devices, including Chromebooks and a set of headphones, for distribution to additional students across our campuses. That distribution will begin this Friday. We are confident that by the time we allocate these resources – and the hotspots that are expected within the week – we will attain our goal of ensuring every student has the technology required to be successful in school.

• In addition to nourishing our students’ minds, we will continue to nourish their bodies. Food distributions will continue, and the number of meal sites will continue to increase as we gain the capacity to do so. Two new curbside pickup locations will begin operation tomorrow, March 25, at Hawthorne Academy and Lowell Middle School. This will grow the number of campus sites where we deliver to 29. We also now have 14 school buses delivering meals to 53 bus stops through our SAISD Eats program with the Transportation Department. From the eight campuses at which we launched on the first day of our school closure, we have ramped up our meal deliveries to a total of 82 sites.

Although under very difficult circumstances, we have accepted the challenge of rapidly scaling our remote-learning and support-service operations to continue providing for the educational and social emotional needs of our students. This commitment will be steadfast over the next month of school closure.

We realize the situation is still fluid, but we will maintain our communications with you throughout this process. You will continue to hear from me – and often. 

By the end of the week, we will have more details for you.

Thank you for your patience and partnership as we address the task at hand. We need to be strong for our families, and I know we can count on you.

Sincerely,
Pedro


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