Dear Pine Bush parents and staff,

Today was a newsworthy day! The governor extended our current school closure at least  through April 29, which puts us more in line with guidance provided by the president. So we’ll keep our digital learning on track at least through the month of April, and, of course, this could well be extended further. I will let you all know when or if that happens.

The other big announcement that came out of Albany today was the cancellation of the June administration of all Regents exams. To more fully understand how that will impact students and schools, we will have to wait for the details that will be released tomorrow by the Board of Regents, which has been conducting its monthly meeting for April today and tomorrow remotely.

The big news for Pine Bush is that today we began full virtual learning Pre-K to 12 throughout the district. From all that I can tell, the launch went very smoothly, which is a testament to the hard work and planning of our incomparable instructional staff! So, if your students didn’t connect today, they are already behind. Please let us know if you need any help and we will try to find some way to assist.

Finally, I am very proud to announce that today we also began to deploy about a dozen of our 3-D printers from the high school to print the headbands for face shields that we will be providing to local health care providers and first responders. Orange Regional Medical Center, Middletown Medical and the Crawford Police Department have already asked to receive some.

I want to give a shout out to Tech teachers Pat Reiser and Ken Marshall who have the printers hard at work in their homes, and to Principal Aaron Hopmayer, who learned from his contacts at the Hudson Valley Council of Industry about the design file provided by SUNY New Paltz.

With the week off to such an exciting start, I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Tim O. Mains, Pine Bush Superintendent