Dear Minisink  Valley parent/guardians:

As COVID-19 pandemic issues continue to impact everyone in our Minisink Valley school community, district leadership has always believed the best place for students to learn is in-person, in our classroom setting, in the safest possible way offering the best opportunity to maximize academic achievement and success while supporting critically important social and emotional growth.

Our obligation and responsibility remain being in compliance with strict and continuously evolving CDC, New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and Orange County Department of Health (OCDOH) mandates, guidelines and directives.

Minisink Valley’s Reopening Committee, in consultation with Dr. Sara Little, the district’s medical director, continues to meet to discuss various scenarios, including OCDOH guidelines and hopeful new NYSDOH guidelines.

As a result, we’ve ordered trifold polycarbonate desk partitions for all students, allowing us to best safeguard student health in our classrooms. The clear partitions will be installed by our Buildings & Grounds staff as soon as they are delivered.

This now allows us to give our students the choice to attend school in-person four days a week, with Wednesdays continuing as our remote learning day, at this time.

The current plan is to begin with our elementary students in a phased-in manner, identical to how we launched the beginning of the school year, as soon as possible and within the next six weeks, pending the delivery and installation of the polycarbonate partitions.

Return to School Survey

 

To best plan for this, we must know your intentions. This survey’s purpose is to collect information from families regarding their interest in increasing their child/children’s in-person instructional days to four days per week.
Collected information will be used in the detailed planning we must complete, which includes classroom design, food service, transportation and more. We will share our finalized plan once complete.

To stress again: Your participation in this survey will allow us to acquire important information to be used in finalizing a safe plan, while following all required NYSDOH COVID-19 guidelines, mandates and protocols.

The option to remain fully remote is unchanged.

Please fill out the survey below for each child who attends school.

The survey will close on Monday, March 8 at 12 p.m.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Brian C. Monahan
Superintendent