Masks will be the topic of the week. Please do not make this a no-win confrontation. If a student does not want to respond to your request, please call administration or security to come escort the student to the cafeteria. This is real simple. Either the student chooses to wear the mask or they go home. Yes, we will have to remind our students about adjusting their masks but if they are making a good faith attempt to wear their mask, please work with them. Why masks….masks are one more way for us to help slow the spread of the COVID virus and to keep schools open. Washing hands and social distancing are also key mitigation practices. Vaccinations are also a key piece in the process and all of our students and staff are eligible to receive the vaccine. Masks will help kids stay in school if they are a close contact. If a student is vaccinated and wears a mask, they will not have to go through the daily testing regiment due to being a close contact.

We are currently testing over 100 kids daily due to close contents. We can test roughly 20 kids every 15 minutes. If perfectly timed and all kids are present we can get this done in less than two hours. We are using multiple staff (Health room, office, security and admin) to accomplish this task. Multiple schools are testing significantly more kids than we are. For every positive student we can expect around 20 close contacts and these kids must be tested over a period of a week to remain at school.

Friday will be an activity day with an outside pep assembly at the end of the day. We will have the logistics set up on the turf field so that we are as spread out as possible to enjoy a 30 minute pep assembly to kick off our fall sports season. The first football game is this Friday at Friends starting at 7:30PM. Please come out and enjoy the evening supporting your Pioneer Cheer, Dance, Band, Flag and Football teams. Go Pioneers!!!

Next Tuesday we will be hosting a building in-service that will begin in the auditorium at 8:00AM. The morning will include work on standards referenced learning, ignite learning initiatives and addressing our schoolwide WIGs (Wildly Important Goals). The afternoon will focus on academy and department work time.

Be Kind – Be Nice – Be Respectful – When asking kids to address their mask issues. Most of our kids will do a great job with their masks and will need simple, kind reminders to address the issues. Your tone and body language goes a long way in how a student will respond to your request. DO NOT FOLLOW students and hound them about their mask. Look for a camera and point towards the person you asked and then report that to administration and/or security. Let us pursue those more difficult cases. DON’T make this personal. Control what you can control and then let others handle to more interesting scenarios.

Thank you for adjusting your routines to address this changing landscape of schooling. Together we will get through this. Please remind yourself when stressed that EVERYONE is trying his or her best to do a great job. I have not meet one Pioneer not willing to help make this better. WE are all frustrated and we want to vent our frustration but please take a deep breath and understand we are all doing the best we can.

Together we are better – Go Pioneers!!!

Relationships, relationships, relationships…..Pioneers lead the way!!! - Mr. Jolliffe

Calendar

Academy Time 2021-22 - OneDrive (sharepoint.com)

1. Are you on track to graduate?
2. What classes do you need to graduate?
3. What academy strand did you complete?
4. \What if your GPA?
5. YOU will be college and career ready!

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If you are interested in offering your talents, please email Sross2@usd259.net

Let’s work together!