Happy Thursday Seniors.
We hope that you are enjoying Spring Spirit week and that your remote learning week is going well.
We have a special senior event to announce. Traditionally, your overall group Class of 2020 photo is first seen when you receive your yearbooks in June. This year, we will unveil this tomorrow, Friday, May 1st! We have made a 48" x 96" banner of your class photo! This banner will be placed at the front steps of BFA (where you took the photo this past Fall). To protect the banner, it will be displayed tomorrow from 8 am to 4 pm and starting next week, on weekdays from 8 am to 8 pm for your viewing. Please keep in mind social distancing of 6 ft when you come to view the banner.
For the past three weeks, many of Vermont's High School Principals have been meeting to discuss ideas about the end of year celebrations. We were told a month ago that we would receive guidance from the Agency of Education and the Department of Health by May 8th. Prior to that time, principals have been asked to submit ideas and I have sent in all the suggestions I have received from seniors and parents. From our Youtube live event and e-mails, we have heard loud and clear that the priorities have been for seniors to physically walk across the stage for graduation. We are trying to figure out a way to do this while we keep social distancing happening. Some ideas have been to set up chairs for parents and seniors outside and with social distance between families and using face masks, to having families be in cars, to having only seniors at the event, and to broadcast it through the cable access channel and the internet, just to name a few.
Before we make any decisions on which way we should move forward, I am waiting for guidance from the AOE and the Governor’s office. Yesterday, in his press release, he said he reminded Vermonters his guidance would be out by May 8th.
Also, next week we will be sending out a survey to seniors and to the parents of seniors for additional feedback to learn more about the priorities everyone has for our celebrations. This survey will be similar to some of the questions I asked in the YouTube live event we had a month ago. We plan to have two surveys, one for seniors and one for the parents to hear our priorities for our end of the year celebrations. We will ask you some of the same questions we asked you at the start of the month and some additional questions. The results of this survey will be shared back with you and we will use them to inform our thinking and planning process.
We would like to conclude today with reiterating our first priority of health and safety as well as our commitment to our seniors on your end of year activities. We fully believe that communication is key and if you have any questions or concerns, we want to hear from you.
We hope that you enjoy the Class of 2020 photo banner.
Sincerely,
Bill Kimball