A Letter to the Community from a Parent and Pediatrician

The following letter was sent to us by Dr. Leah Costello. Dr. Costello is a local pediatrician and a parent in one of our CVSD schools. She is also one of the pediatricians who supports and consults with CVSD for our reopening efforts. This letter was unsolicited. She asked that we pass it along to our families and faculty/staff. 

10/27/20

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Last night my son Theo had trouble falling asleep so he and I did a mindfulness activity on gratitude. He is grateful for going back to school 4 days a week.

He is not alone. I see kids in my office all day who feel this way. And honestly, as a parent, I feel this way too.

As part of my role in the CVSD reopening, I have been meeting with teachers as they reopen grades K-4. I am amazed at how our teachers, staff, and administrators are bending over backward to keep our children safe at school. There are so many guidelines! I read the revised document last Friday, it is 41 pages! All I had to do was read through the revisions, but our schools have to make sure every piece of that 41-page document is in place to keep our kids safe. Incredible! Send your schools a thank you note, and coffee and healthy snacks while you are at it!

Parents and guardians, it is now our turn to step up and show that same level of commitment to our community. It is our job to keep COVID 19 out of the schools. Luckily, we don't have a 41 -page document with guidelines we have to follow! We actually have it much easier than the schools. We have a 3 step process to follow "Six-foot spaces, Mask on faces, Uncrowded places." But parents, I think we can go farther than that. Think about what is truly essential in your day to day activities. If you really need to do an activity, then do it with safety measures in place. If you think about it and realize it is not truly an essential activity, then revise your plans to a safer alternative. The schools are making sacrifices for us and we need to do the same for them.

Here is the really hard part. We need to seriously think about the upcoming holidays and how we can keep our children, teachers, and schools safe and healthy. This might mean it is not safe to see out of state family or have extended family gatherings for the holidays. If many of us travel and COVID 19 cases increase to a critical point, we may be in the same position we were in the spring. We need to do everything we can to prevent that! Changing our holiday plans is really hard, I know. I am devastated about this too - family and friends are extraordinarily important to us.

Vermont continues to lead the country in the management of COVID 19. We continue to have a very robust and phenomenal contact-tracing program to find cases and prevent the spread of the virus. Despite that, we still have cases of COVID 19 and we are NOT immune. Please do your part to keep COVID 19 out of the schools so we can keep our kids in school and our schools healthy. This is on us, parents, and I know we can do it.

If you have questions about your upcoming holiday plans please reach out to the Vermont Department of Health to discuss - call 802-863-7240 or see their FAQ page.

Thank you,

Leah Costello, MD

Timber Lane Pediatrics

WCS Candidate Forum Adapts But Goes On During COVID

If you have not yet voted here in Vermont, or even if you have - check out this video! 

Williston Central School has a long-standing tradition of hosting a Candidate Forum every two years. This is usually held in the school, which had to change this year. Middle school students did a LOT of research on important topics and issues and then sent them in video form to various candidates. The candidates sent back video responses, all using Flipgrid. They have been compiled into one final video for your viewing. We learned a lot from this video and are so impressed by the quality of the questions!

Click on this link to view the video if the viewer below doesn't work. 

CVSD Update, October 26, 2020

October 26, 2020

Dear Families and Friends,

This week we celebrate bringing our K-2 students safely back for four-days per week instruction and look forward to welcoming most of our Grade 3 and 4 students.. The joy and enthusiasm generated by having them in school is palpable. By next week, we hope to have all students in this age group back. Staffing issues, not our ability to meet health and safety guidance, is what is keeping us from bringing all Grade 4 students back at this time. Please know that we are doing everything we can to resolve this issue as soon as possible - and know that we’ve been working on it for several weeks now. We have broadened our normal venues for posting positions and are making personal contacts with qualified individuals. 

Last Friday, the Agency of Education released revised Safe and Healthy Schools guidance. The main changes impacting our CVSD plans relate to social distancing. The new guidance explicitly sets a 3 feet minimum for students through Grade 6, and a 6 feet minimum for Grades 7-12. Gone are the “if possible” qualifiers. We are currently meeting these more stringent guidelines with our Kindergarten through 4th graders. The guidance also frames the use of plexiglass as an added layer of protection rather than a means of reducing distancing requirements. Now that 6th graders have officially been included in the 3 feet group, we will start to discuss how and when we will bring these students back for four days per week of in-person learning. 

As you can imagine, there is a lot of conversation about Thanksgiving travel and the possible need to quarantine. If you are traveling outside of Vermont, please be aware that there are travel restrictions put in place by Governor Scott that would require you to quarantine for up to 14 days upon your return to Vermont if you have travelled to a red or orange zone. We have been notified that the Vermont Agency of Education will be providing guidance regarding travel of families and staff for the upcoming holidays by the end of October. We will share this information with you at that time. Obviously, we need to work together to ensure adequate staffing and a safe and healthy school environment.

And finally, please know that our middle level principals are working together to clarify expectations for hybrid learning on remote days. While there will always be differences between schools based on individual choices and unique configurations, we aim to provide equity of learning standards, learning opportunities, and learning time.

Wishing you a safe and healthy week - and Halloween!

Elaine

View the full newsletter, which includes this letter and more!

CVSD Community Budget Forum

We invite all members of the CVSD community to share your thoughts in a number of ways as we kick off the 2021-2022 budget development season. 

Please add your thoughts and rate those of others to the CVSD Budget Thoughtexchange by October 23.  

Please join us for a Virtual Community Budget Forum on October 27 at 6:00 pm. We'll start with an overview of the process, share updates about Board goals, and share insight gained from the Budget Thoughtexchange. After a short period together, community members will then have the opportunity to join principals from each building or town for a question and answer period.

We hope you will join us and share your voice. 

Topic: CVSD Community Budget Forum
Time: October 27, 2020, 06:00 PM

Join Zoom Meeting
https://cvsdvt-org.zoom.us/j/92218271427

Meeting ID: 922 1827 1427
Passcode: CVSDbudget (required to join)

The links to the separate school meetings will be posted on the district website and all school websites that day.

CVSD Update October 16, 2020

Dear Friends and Families,

We have just completed our first experience with a positive COVID case in our schools While we would have wished not to have any cases - ever - I am so proud to let you know how smoothly it all went. Every part of our plan went as imagined. Kudos to the Williston administration for having their systems in place and being able to provide all of the information being requested by the Vermont Department of Health team. This went a long way towards narrowing the scope of the impact. I’d also like to give a shout-out to the CVSD Reopening Team that mobilized at a moment’s notice on a Sunday afternoon. It feels very reassuring to be part of a team that works well together, and more importantly, is committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure the best possible results for our students, their families, and our faculty and staff. For those of you who read the Williston Observer, I want to point out that the letter we sent to you on Sunday night was written by us. A sub-group of the team spent over an hour considering every line in that letter. We knew how important this first communication was and we wanted to make sure we got it as exactly right as possible. If others used portions of our letter to express the same sentiment, we are fine with that, but we want you all to know how seriously we took the messaging of this information. For those of you who don’t receive the Williston Observer - there was a sentence at the end of a very good report that indicated our letter may have been a form letter that we downloaded. It was not.

We are continuing the process of bringing more students back for in-person instruction. Our kindergarten students have been in for two weeks and everyone involved is thrilled to have them back. I heard from every single K-4 principal about the energy and excitement their presence generated. It has gone very smoothly. On Monday the 19th we will welcome our grades 1 and 2 students for four days of in-person instruction. We’ve been planning for this transition for several weeks and are confident that it will also go very smoothly, I can’t underscore enough how vigilant our teachers and administrators have been around making sure that we are able to follow all of the health and safety guidance. We have full confidence in the practices we have put in place. The following week, if all goes as well as we anticipate, we will be bringing in our grades 3 and 4 students. Again, our plan could be adjusted based on our experiences, our community context, and the greater Vermont context. We will always consider the health and safety of our students first.

Please note the republishing of our School Year Calendar. I say republishing because there will be no additional changes to the calendar that was distributed last spring. In the recent legislative session, the legislature set the number of student days required to 170. Our calendar, as adopted last spring, has 172 student days for our K-8 students and 173 student days for our high school students.

I wish you all good health and a lovely fall weekend!

Elaine Pinckney

CVSD Superintendent

The full newsletter, with additional news, announcements, resources, and reminders can be found at this link. 

CVSD Budget: Community Input Welcomed

The CVSD School Board encourages you to get involved and share what’s on your mind as we begin the budget process for the 2021-2022 school year. This budget will be presented to voters before and on Town Meeting Day, March 2, 2021.

While this has been quite the unusual year, the board and administration are planning around a return to normalcy for the 2021-2022 school year. Are there parts of our current experience that we should continue? Thanks to federal and state funding, we are optimistic we will be starting next year on sound financial footing. Should this change, what areas of the budget do you believe are important to protect? We invite you to join us in the discussion.

Your voice is important and valued. There are at least 3 ways to get involved:

• Please share your thoughts and rate those of others on the CVSD Budget Thoughtexchange by October 23.
• Join the virtual CVSD Community Budget Forum on October 27 to discuss what you value most in our schools.*  Find out about CVSD’s financial outlook. Gain an understanding of our budget process.
• You are also invited to attend all future budget meetings. The full schedule of meetings can be found on the district’s website: www.cvsdvt.org/budget

Feel free to get in touch with the School Board at any time: cvsdboard@cvsdvt.org

* Information about how to join the Community Budget Forum will be posted on the Budget page of our district’s website and communicated through school newsletters.

CVSD Update, October 2, 2020

 Dear CVSD Families and Friends,

We have a few short updates to share with you this week. We are very excited to welcome many of our kindergarten students to school four days a week beginning on Monday. For those with first and second graders, if you have not yet completed the survey that was sent at the end of last week or early this week, please do so as soon as possible. 

Here are a few additional items of importance: 

October 9th for K-8 schools:

This year, as in past years, we have designated two days for Parent-Teacher conferences on our calendar-- October 9th and March 19th. There is no school for K-8 students on these days. We hold these conferences to ensure that there is strong communication between teachers and families around the growth of their students socially, emotionally, and academically. It is an important time to take stock of your child as a whole. It is also an opportunity for teachers and parents to get to know each other better. We strive to build as strong a connection with our families as possible. Many, many teachers and parents have already met this school year to reinforce these important connections.

All of our K-8 teachers will once again schedule a conference with their students’ families. As in past years, this conference may be scheduled on October 9th, but also may be scheduled any time between now and the end of the term. In fact, we are encouraging our teachers to schedule these conferences at a mutually convenient time for the teacher and the family and avoid scheduling too many conferences all on one day. Many of our teachers, across the school district, have been implementing this practice for many years. We find that the time allotted is not only more convenient, it is also more focused.

With this expectation, we provide a flexible day for our teachers. We believe this is a win-win situation - better, more personalized conferences for you, and more manageable scheduling for teachers. To summarize, you may have a parent-teacher conference scheduled on October 9th, or it may be scheduled at another time more convenient for both you and your child’s teacher. Be assured that we will make time for this important conference.

A reminder: There IS school for CVU students on October 9.

Temperature Checks

We’d like to thank parents for their diligence in screening kids at home for fevers (above 100.4F) and COVID symptoms before sending them to the bus or school. Parents of bus riders should be aware that, based on the extremely low incidence of finding anything other than normal temperatures, on some routes we have deferred the temperature screening from the bus to the school.

Transportation

The guidance from the Vermont Agency of Education around transporting students on buses includes the following information:

Step II Guidance:

• Create physical distance between students and on school buses (for example, seating students one child per seat, every other row).

Step III Guidance:

• Students should be spaced out for the number of riders

As we move toward increasing the number of students in schools when our kindergarten transitions to 4 days a week on October 5, our plan for adapting transportation is a slow, methodical process. We will still spread students out, students from the same family may continue to sit together, and we will, when necessary, allow up to two kindergarten students and eventually first and second graders to sit together in a seat. Additional changes will depend on ridership and will be communicated to parents of students on the affected routes before they occur.

A Friendly Reminder About Positive COVID Cases

If and when we have a confirmed positive COVID-19 case in our district, we will only be able to share very limited information with our community. We must abide by FERPA and respect the privacy of those impacted. We will use language that leaves out any identifying information in order to protect that privacy. Please view the information about FERPA and HIPPA, as well as details about our processes in the CVSD Symptomatic & Positive Cases Guide. If and when we have a positive case in our learning community, the Department of Health will identify close contacts and reach out directly to those individuals as soon as possible (typically within 24 hours). You can help this process by answering your phone if they reach out to you and being prepared to support their contact tracing efforts. If you have specific concerns about your student’s health, please reach out to your pediatrician.

Thank you for your support. Have a wonderful fall weekend,

Elaine Pinckney