Below is an email sent to the parents on Thursday, March 19.
Good evening parents and guardians,
I wanted to take a moment to reach out to everyone during these ever changing times. As you are probably aware, the governor has called for a "closing" of K-12 schools for the remainder of the year. While this does not mean learning is expected to stop, it will most definitely look a lot different over the next couple of months.
I want you to know that we are struggling with the fact that we will not have your kids in our building in a traditional sense. We care a great deal about your children and their well-being. While school may be changing for the remainder of the year, our care for your children has not.
Today, we received guidance from a statewide task force with suggestions for how to continue forward and provide meaningful instruction for our students. Our staff will be working hard next week to determine what this looks like for LMS. We are going to keep you as informed as we can throughout the process.
The first step that we will take is to make phone calls to each household starting Monday morning. We want to check in on how you and your students are doing, ask what we can do to help you out, and gather some information that will help us plan moving forward.
As the week progresses, we will get information out about how personal items and computers can be picked up. We will also begin to educate you on what the new school will look like for your child.
In the meantime, if you have any questions at all, please feel free to email me at dcarlson@usd405.com. No time is too early or too late. While I may not be able to respond immediately or have detailed answers, I will make every effort to respond at my earliest convenience to the best of my ability. My number one goal is to make sure that your kids know that our adults care about them, that we are going to continue to be here to support them, and then that we can provide an effective (although different) form of schooling for the remainder of the year.
Respectfully,
Derek Carlson
Lyons Middle School Principal