February 15, 2021

Dear Beacon Community:

I just wanted to take a minute to share a couple of quick updates.

Celebrating Black History Month- Be on the lookout on our Facebook and Instagram pages later this week and month with updates and pictures from our schools and classrooms on different activities that took place this month to celebrate and honor Black History Month!

Weather:  It looks like we have some challenging weather coming at us this week.  Just a couple of things to remember.  This year, due to the differences in our school schedules, we do not have a two-hour delay, so on those days, we will offer remote instruction.  However, one of the things we will have to take into account is if teachers and students have access to the internet.  Power outages and internet outages across the region could make remote instruction impossible for us.  This all becomes more real to us when we have a potential ice storm coming in on us.  Needless to say, we will make a decision tomorrow morning around 5:00am with the best information we have available.

Voluntary COVID-19 Surveillance Testing:  We did our first round of rapid COVID-19 testing this past week.  It was very successful due to our nursing staff who were amazing and our security team did a great job keeping it organized.  Our next testing dates are on February 24 and February 28.  We will be calling folks to set up a time who filled out the form.  

You can still volunteer to participate in this program by filling out this online form: https://forms.gle/WwrTiiXRCQYbh7o39

As long as we have tests available, we will keep doing the testing program through this late winter and into early spring.  We will share results as soon as we have reached testing 10% of our in-school population.

The next Diversity Committee Meeting will be Thursday, March 4 at 7:00 via Zoom.  We will share updates about the various projects in progress at the meeting.

Enjoy the rest of President’s Day!

Matt Landahl