March 12, 2020
Dear Barrie Community Members,
As a number of you may be aware, a few minutes ago Governor Larry Hogan and the State Superintendent of Education announced that all public schools in Maryland will be closed starting next week. Following the protocols we shared with our community last week, Barrie School will follow this decision and will close starting Monday, March 16 for all on-campus classes or activities until further notice.
To be clear, we will be open tomorrow (Friday, March 13) for a full day of on-campus classes and normal Extended Day hours through 6 pm tomorrow evening. That said, it is critically important that you and your children pick up all needed learning materials tomorrow, as parents and students will not be able to visit campus until we officially reopen.
As we have previously communicated, we will launch our distance learning experiences for Toddler through 12th grade students on the third day of the closure, which will be on the morning of Wednesday, March 18th. This will allow our teachers critical time to finalize their preparations and lesson plans for the online transition. With this in mind, I ask that you read this email in its entirety as it contains important next steps on a number of key issues.
When Will We Re-Open? Our school will only reopen for on-campus classes and activities when county and state public health officials determine it is safe to do so. While the State Superintendent just announced a preliminary reopen date of Monday March 30, public health officials we have been monitoring suggest that schools will likely be closed for much longer than two weeks.
Supporting Our Students: Before diving into key details of what this means for Barrie, I want to begin with what is most important. The youth in our community will be looking to all of us for leadership -- from our youngest kids who may hear snippets about the virus on the news to our elementary students who can't put this crisis in perspective to our oldest teenagers worried about their elderly family members. While the direct health risk to our young people is actually exceedingly low given the data coming in from around the world, my greatest concern for students is their emotional health and wellness. As such, I am asking that we all strive to be our best selves as parents, family members, and educators to nurture the hearts and minds of our students. I also ask that we be patient with one another.
Talking About This With Your Students: We are gathering resources for parents on our COVID-19 webpage (which will go live tomorrow). The main message I want all of us to take into the days and weeks ahead is that maintaining our children's emotional wellness is our biggest priority. Accordingly, I urge each of us to take the following steps:
- Our children need us to be a non-anxious presence, they need our reassurance and comfort, and they need our wisdom. Their emotional wellness requires us to be calm and give them our attention.
- With intentional language, I advise all of us as parents to be straightforward at home about why school will close on Monday, use developmentally appropriate language, and keep in mind that less is more in terms of detail. Here are two resources for talking with your children about COVID-19:
An article from the National Association of School Psychologists
Monday's letter from Interim Head of Montessori Lilian Mullane (particularly helpful for younger children)
- Following the advice of child and adolescent psychologists, please minimize unneeded media exposure related to the crisis with your children and adolescents -- including the car radio and the television news at home. This includes limiting non school-related screen time of our students. Please closely monitor their cell phone use, text messages, and social media presence -- even when they ask you not to.
- Spend quality time with your child or adolescent and establish a daily routine that works for you, your student, and your entire family. Find a healthy combination of normal sleep and waking schedules, school work, reading, play and exercise, and family time.
Given the transition to a distance learning experience, it is safe to say that our notion of "what school looks like" will need to change. I want to acknowledge that a prolonged period of school closure will be difficult for parents as we juggle our work commitments alongside our children being at home day after day. Although this global health issue will eventually pass, we will all get pretty frustrated in the weeks ahead.
Supporting Our Families: Over the last few weeks as news of the virus has increased, our faculty and staff have spent a tremendous amount of time after regular working hours preparing for this day. With this in mind, we are launching the following immediate steps:
- Student learning will continue through a number of online platforms which will be detailed on our COVID-19 webpage and include sections for specific grade levels.
- So far, all Barrie families have indicated they have reliable internet and access to devices to support their children's education or they have let us know and we have provided them direct support. If you need help with this for your student, please contact pcsupport@barrie.org and a member of our tech team will personally call you tomorrow and endeavor to meet your needs.
- Toddler and Primary Teachers will begin hosting virtual "circle time" sessions, and they will post videos and recorded story time readings for students to view on Kaymbu with parent participation. They will also schedule individual parent conferences and group chats with parents to support Montessori at Home enrichment.
- Lower and Upper Elementary Teachers will begin assigning work for students online through Google Classroom and Kaymbu, post full class and small group class lessons/assignments, and provide student and parent enrichment opportunities for at-home learning. They will also schedule individual parent conferences and group chats with parents.
- Middle and High School Teachers will continue teaching their regular academic courses, with online class sessions and assignments through PowerSchool and Zoom and the opportunity for scheduled conference check-ins with students and parents.
- Our School Counselor (Dr. Natosha Speight) and School Nurse (Kirstie Abernathy) will be organizing key parent resources for our web page and they will be starting a blog called "The Doctors Are In" to support wellness at home throughout the closure. (We have promoted Kirstie to "Doctor" and she is fine with that!)
Supporting Our Faculty and Staff: A number of you may have questions about tuition. In full transparency, we cannot offer tuition refunds as we are committed to paying our teachers and staff as they continue to support our students through this crisis. As we speak, our team is laboring around-the-clock to transition to a distance learning experience. Once school resumes and we know the length of the closure, we will offer prorated refunds for bus transportation and Extended Day for the days we are closed.
In closing, I want to personally share that my own grandmother often conveyed her experiences of living through the flu pandemic of 1919. Not a month of my own childhood passed without her regaling me with stories of how the community banded together and supported one another through the crisis -- and how the children learned from the steadfast example of their parents and their teachers about the importance of enduring and remaining strong. In the past weeks, I have thought of my grandmother each day while putting my own kids to bed. I think this wisdom is worth remembering from one who lived through a crisis that was more challenging and more serious. I ask you to keep the historical perspective in mind that while this situation is hard for many of us, we can overcome this if we work together.
Please reach out to me directly if you have questions. as I will be available each day coordinating the effort to support our teachers, our students, and our Barrie parents.
In partnership and support,