As a Matter of Fact!
SOMSD Newsletter | Vol 2. Issue 9 | January 22, 2021
Return to School: Week In Review
Dear SOMSD Families,
This week, we reopened schools for in-person learning to a subset of our student population. It was great to see students back in our buildings, and our District’s senior leadership staff was able to visit all of our schools during the first two days of school reopening.
Were things perfect, no, however, we anticipated that similar to our first-week of virtual learning there would be a learning curve and unexpected concerns to navigate. In reviewing the past week, there were operational/logistic concerns as well as technology issues that schools had to address. Operational and logistical concerns are being addressed and we are working with school building principals to continue to trouble-shoot and remedy any facilities issues.
Regarding our tech concerns, the District is aware of an issue where students with personal devices may have challenges logging into the SOMSD-Student wireless student guest network. We have identified the component in the District's wireless infrastructure causing the authentication issue and are working with our wireless infrastructure vendor towards a resolution.
We are prepared to implement a short term solution to help alleviate the authentication challenges on the student guest network in the event the component is not repaired by Monday morning. Please see the attached Return To School - Wireless Login Information - Student Personal Devices.pdf to assist your children: http://bit.ly/39V8frc Please note as a reminder:
Make sure your child comes to school with a fully-charged device
Please ensure that your child knows the username/password to sign in to their device (you may need to tape it onto their device or place a note in their bookbag)
This week, as we do every week, we convened with our school building principals and District leaders, and effective on Monday, January 25, we will now provide teachers who do not have students in the buildings (i.e. grade levels are not yet learning via hybrid or students are learning remotely) the option to teach virtually from home.
Teachers, assigned to classes reporting for in-school instruction will continue to report to their assigned locations to provide instruction.
In addition, support service staff will continue to report to their locations to ensure the delivery of services as directed by their building administrator and/or department head.
Thank you to all the families who entrusted your children back into our schools. We appreciated the many emails, notes and photos sent of your children’s first day back to school. We also thank our virtual parents/guardians, those who continued with all-virtual instruction for their children, thank you for your patience. We know during this first week there were disruptions to your child’s normal schedule and we are monitoring areas to improve upon and are working diligently to ensure that things run more smoothly next week.
Also please note, starting today, the District’s Covid-19 Dashboard will be available. The SOMSD Covid-19 Dashboard will be updated weekly and will track and reflect positive cases of both virtual and in-person staff and students. Click here to access: https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/coviddata/
Enjoy your weekend and we look forward to seeing our students back in school next week.
Educationally yours,
Dr. Ronald G. Taylor
Superintendent of Schools
Back to School Images
Additional Information & Resources for the Community
The School District of South Orange & Maplewood
Email: communications@somsd.k12.nj.us
Website: www.somsd.k12.nj.us
Location: 525 Academy Street, Maplewood, NJ, USA
Phone: 973-762-5600
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/somsdk12
Twitter: @SOMSDK12