2020-2021 School Year Updates
BCCHS Students and Families,
We hope you are all doing well and enjoying the summer. We still have many unanswered questions about school’s re-opening in the fall.
DOE Re-opening Guidance Letter
DOE Return to School 2020 Page
BCCHS has a Planning Committee consisting of teachers, parents and students, who are meeting throughout the summer to discuss re-opening models within the forthcoming parameters of the DOE. It seems the models that schools can choose from include grouping students so they have 2-3 days of school a week, with the other days being at home doing remote learning. We want to assure you that despite the mounting complexities of reopening, your child’s academic learning, social-emotional wellbeing, and health are our priorities.
Here’s what we know now:
There will be a blended learning model for most students in the fall. This is a hybrid of in-person and remote learning. We assure you that we will be following all guidelines from the NYC DOE (informed by the Center for Disease Control) to create a safe environment for our students, staff, and families.
For those families who do not feel that it is safe for their children to return to the school building, there will be an option to select “fully remote,” thus opting out of the blended learning model. More information is forthcoming about the process of opting into fully remote learning. We understand the anxiety and stress that many families have about the idea of transitioning back to school in the building, and we support these sensitive decisions that your families will be making. We are told that there will be a deadline for opting into fully remote learning. We are uncertain at this time who will be facilitating the remote learning process for these students.
Our school will be able to select from a couple of models provided to us by the NYCDOE based on whether we have two or three cohorts of students that we can accommodate for in-person instruction. If we have three cohorts of in-person learning, then students will be able to attend school one day per week and two days every other week. If we can accommodate two cohorts, then we will be able to have in-person instruction two days per week and three days every other week.
The number of cohorts depends on our student enrollment, staffing, and the square footage of each instructional space in our building. Please note that we are still assessing whether we will have two or three cohorts based on this information, including creative utilization of space in our building.
We are so grateful to our BCCHS staff for their continuous support and flexibility. We recognize that now more than ever our home-school connection is invaluable, and I feel fortunate to have such a strong partnership with our families. As we have emphasized, this summer we are thinking a lot about how to ensure a strong sense of community and focus on social-emotional learning in September. We also continue to deepen our anti-racist and equity work in terms of curriculum and actions as a school.
Please stay connected as we will continue to reach out to you throughout the summer with important information about September. We appreciate your timely completion of our surveys that will inform our decisions.
We hope that you’re enjoying your summer and continue to look forward now more than ever to the day that all of our students will be back in our building for in-person learning again.
Take care,
-BCCHS