Dear Beacon Community:

I am incredibly proud of our efforts this year to keep people healthy and safe and to educate our young people.  Although September 2020 seems like a long time ago we were the largest district in Dutchess County to open for in-person instruction for our students with our hybrid model.  We have safely maintained our hybrid and remote models through many challenges the past many months without a long term closure of any of our schools.  None of this would have been accomplished without the efforts of everyone in our district and our community.

Even in the midst of this long winter, there are signs of hope on the COVID-19 landscape for our community.  Our staff members are slowly but surely starting to get vaccinated through state or county programs.  While we want this to happen faster, it is starting to happen.  Case rates and hospitalizations have also been decreasing for several weeks in our community and county.

With these signs of hope, we have been exploring ways for students to be in school more often.  One first step is with Beacon High School.  They will be starting a full eight period day for its hybrid and remote students on March 1.  I also wanted to make the community aware that we are studying a return to four days a week instruction for our students while still maintaining remote instruction for those who choose it. While I cannot make promises that this will be possible for us, we are working to develop a plan that would start with elementary students and then move up to middle and possibly high school.  We would need to maintain safety standards and will work with health department officials to see what’s possible.

A potential timeline will look like this:

Late February- Town Halls and other communications with details of the plan

Late February/Early March- Families decide on in-person programming vs remote

Late March/Early April- Students begin to return to an in-person four day a week instructional model starting with elementary students.  

Look for more communication on this later this month and let me know if you have questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Matt Landahl