Dear Pine Bush parents and staff,

In a previous update, I indicated that we have had a team working on addressing how students and staff might be able to get things that they had left at school and return school property. I have now received the initial report from that team. They would like to accomplish both collecting school property and allowing staff and students to collect their own personal property closer to the end of the school year, sometime in June. But in order to estimate how much time this might require and how many people we would need to accommodate (possibly over multiple days), they need some data. The team has developed a survey that will allow them to get a sense of what people need and how many people we are talking about. I’ve attached a link to the survey below and we have added it to the banner (top) of our Pine Bush homepage: www.PineBushSchools.org. Students will also be getting this link sent to their school email addresses. The survey is very short, and it is important that we get one for each student who has things they need to return or has things at school they want to retrieve. If you have multiple children who are Pine Bush students, we ask that you fill out a separate survey for each one of them.

Please know that the elementary music teachers are developing an independent plan that will allow us to get instruments back to elementary band members separately. So you don’t need to tell us about any band instruments in your survey, unless you are a middle school or high school student who had a band instrument in a locker that we didn’t know about.  Also, if you borrowed a Chromebook, we already have that list, so you don’t need to mention returning district-owned Chromebooks.

We are asking that you complete the survey or surveys by next Monday, May 11, at 5 p.m. After the administrators in each school have analyzed the responses from all their students and staff, the team will complete their plans for some time in June when we can manage this process. I should be able to describe that to you in one of my future update messages.

LINK: Personal Belongings Survey

Yesterday was national School Nurses Day, so I want to give a shout out to our great school nurses who have done and continue to do a great job of keeping our students healthy and safe.

Tomorrow, Friday, is National Field Day! Our physical education teachers have all posted a wide variety of fun activities for kids to pick from and posted them in their Google Classrooms. The overwhelming majority of states have closed schools for the rest of the year, just as we have in New York. Since elementary and middle school students will miss their usual Field Day this year, our physical education teachers are joining with their colleagues across the country to give our kids something fun to do at home. High school students can also complete one or more of these activities for their logs.

I’ll be back with an update message next Monday about the new plans for our school elections that are now scheduled for June 9. 

If I get confirmation about the distribution of masks (with meals) for next week, I’ll send that update on Sunday.

Stay safe, everybody!

Tim O. Mains, Pine Bush Superintendent