Dear Pine Bush parents and families,

I wanted to give you all a quick update on our plans to Return for More Learning due to begin next week. The barriers that we needed to meet state Department of Health (DOH) guidelines have arrived, and many have already been installed on classroom desks. The bus routes have been consolidated. Our director of Transportation, Mr. Wickham, is almost finished creating messages to inform each student about his or her pick-up time, place and bus number. That information will be sent to each student’s Pine Bush email account. As soon as those messages go out, I will call back to remind you to look for it and what the subject line will say, so you can find it easily.

Next week, when we begin on Monday, most teachers will be assigning asynchronous work. Self-contained classroom students will continue to report to school as they have been doing five days a week. All elementary students will start Monday with about 10-15 minutes of synchronous connections so their teacher can take attendance and to make sure students understand their expectations for the day. But most of the work on Mondays will be asynchronous, meaning students can do it on their own at their own pace. Many AP, accelerated, and college classes that have been holding synchronous sessions on Mondays will continue to do so. At least through Monday, May 3, (and possibly longer), Mobile Mondays will continue to be largely asynchronous. There will be an exception on April 19 at the elementary
level, which is a half day for kids due to parent/teacher conferences.

Of course, on Tuesday, April 13, we will begin the new four days of instruction each week for those students whose parents chose more in-person learning.

I’ll have a broader message on Sunday, and I will be back before then to tell you about the bus information, but I wanted to give you this “heads up” tonight.

Have a great rest of your evening,

Tim O. Mains, Pine Bush Superintendent