Good Evening,

Tonight’s message is about a very important survey that we need every student to complete and about plans each school has developed to return personal belongings to students and collect any school property you might have at home. 

The Digital Equity Survey is our attempt to figure out who does and who does not have high speed internet at home and which children do or do not have access to a dedicated laptop, Chromebook or computer. A dedicated device should not include a smart phone or a Chromebook on loan from the school.

We’re trying hard to gather this information, because there is a definite possibility that we may have to begin next year with all virtual learning, and if we have to do that, we want to know who we might need to support to make that effort.

This very short survey has been placed into the Google classroom for each elementary student and in the English/ELA class for every student in grades 6 through 11. 

I’m confident that for very young children, say those in grades pre-K through second grade, parents will probably need to go to their child’s Google classroom to complete the survey for them. That may also be the case for the parents of some of our special needs and second language students.

Even if your child is capable of completing this short survey on their own, we would still appreciate your checking to see that they have completed this very important task. 

Please know that we are treating the data we receive as confidential, but we will be hampered in supporting you next fall without it. So we have asked teachers to continue their outreach to every student until we have data for all of our students.

I also have an update on the plans each school has developed to return personal belongings to students and collect any school property you might have at home. In a previous message I suggested that you check your bag of returned items before leaving, but we now believe that most of the students with items in one of the routine locations have let us know that and we have located them. So to keep everything moving smoothly, I’m changing that part of the plan. We are asking that you let us place the bag in your trunk and check it when you get home.

Every school has very specific plans located in the “School Links” portion in the middle of each school’s page on our website. In addition, I have posted a master schedule for all of the schools with just dates and times under “News and Announcements” on our homepage.  The first day for pick up is this Friday at CVMS, so please check each of your children’s school sites for those important details.

Have a good evening,

 Tim O. Mains, Pine Bush Superintendent