​Principals’ Update – September 11, 2020

Welcome back to Dr. Roberta Bondar School!

We greatly appreciated everyone’s flexibility and support as we worked through the start-up of this very unusual year. Our staggered entry process worked well, as a third of the school arrived each day. Everyone was excited to be back, students, staff, and of course the parents!

COVID-19 Protocols

As you are aware from our Re-Entry plan (posted on our website), we are doing everything we can to ensure public health measures are followed to the tee! Parents, we cannot do this without your help. Please follow all health measures that have forwarded to you, and that are posted on the Alberta Health Services website.

Please use the COVID-19 ALBERTA HEALTH DAILY CHECKLIST attached. If your child has any symptoms, as outlined by AHS, however mild, please do not send them to school. This is going to require all families to have a back-up plan if their child is ill. I know this is going to be difficult for some families, but it is essential if we are going to keep our students and staff safe and healthy!

All students and staff are required to wear masks when they come to school. We ask when you accompany your child to school; you also are wearing a mask.

Children will meet their teacher outside (wearing masks, of course) at a designated spot. For now and until our entry processes are more established, we will be using all doors around the school to ensure a smooth entry with no hallway crossovers. The hallways will be taped with directional arrows. As soon as your child enters the class, they will need to wash their hands or use hand sanitizer. Students will be asked to sanitize or wash their hands frequently throughout the day. Each child will have their own set of materials and will not be sharing items.

“Soft-Start Entry” Bell – 8:25 am

This year, we are being asked to have a “soft-start entry” into the school to offset the loss of instructional time as the students transition into class. The students will be able to meet their teacher at their designated spot and a bell will ring at 8:25 to let students know they can start coming into the school. The instructional bell will ring at 8:30. Students are not late at 8:25; however, they are late if they arrive at school after the 8:30 bell. Please 2 | 3 plan to arrive at school on time for the soft-start entry bell. The creative playground will be closed before school starts and after school.

Class Confirmations

You will be receiving an email on Friday confirming your child’s teacher. We greatly appreciate your patience as we having been trying to work out the number of teachers we need to assign to the Hub, and how we are going to configure the in-school classrooms.

Our in-school classes will become “cohorts” or “bubbles” of students, similar to what you may have established with your family and/or close friends. Each class will work together, have lunch together, and play together. This means our teachers will work very hard at building a tight, supportive sense of community with each of the children, and the class as a whole. In order to ensure contact with others outside of their bubble is limited, students will have recesses with their own class. This has taken a fair amount of thought and organization, and the details of how it will work will be part of next week’s update.

The use of masks in classes for all children will be critical, as physical distancing in our classrooms with our flip tables will not be possible. Children will have opportunities to remove their masks when the teachers take them outside or to an area of the school where there is more space to distance (i.e. the gym or the Launch Pad).

Students will be having most of their PE classes outside, weather permitting. Please ensure your child dresses for the weather.

Music will come to their classroom, rather than having students go to the music room. Our music room is smaller than the other classrooms and has no window to open for ventilation. All of our other classrooms do have windows that open.

Conferences – September 24th & 25th

This year, we will be having “virtual conferences” with families and teachers. You will need to book a 15-minute conference time through PowerSchool. The teachers will then send you a Skype Invitation to have a virtual conference. Our conference bookings will be:

Grade 1-6 

Thursday, September 24th - 4:30 – 7:30 

Friday, September 25th – 8:00 – 1:00 

Kindergarten 

Thursday, September 24th - 8:30 – 11:30 AM Classes

Thursday, September 24th – 12:30 – 3:30 PM Classes

Thursday, September 24th – 4:30 – 7:30 AM & PM Classes Friday, September 25th – 8:00 – 1:00 AM & PM Classes

Conference Booking

Conference booking will open on Thursday, September 17th at 6:00 am and will close on Tuesday, September 22nd at 11:59 pm. This will give our teachers a day to set up the Skype meetings.

School Council – Tuesday, September 22 - 6:45pm

Our first School Council meeting of the year will be on September 22 at 6:45 PM using the Microsoft Teams platform. If you would like to attend the meeting, please RSVP by September 20th using this Google Form: 

Link to Google Form​

The agenda for the meeting and the School Council newsletter will be forwarded to you in another SchoolMessenger email. Please ensure you have signed up to receive SchoolMessenger emails (opting to receive ‘commercial’ emails as well in order to be a part of all of their emails that refer to fundraising.) Information as to how to set this up was in your Opening Package sent home earlier this week. If you are a parent of a Hub class, you may pick your package up at the school. 

We look forward to a great year with your children!

Laine Mulholland Principal​

Kim Howden Assistant Principal