Easley Weekly Update

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone had a great weekend and enjoyed the gorgeous weather!

Bus Driver Appreciation

This week DPS is celebrating Bus Driver Appreciation. As you know there have been major issues across the district, state, and country when it comes to bus driver shortages. We are really fortunate at Easley to have drivers who consistently show up day in and day out despite the hectic schedules they are being asked to run. Please take a moment to thank your child's bus driver and let them know how very much they are appreciated.

Safety Patrol is Back!

You may have noticed we have students helping at carline in the morning and afternoon; we are so very excited to have our fifth graders participating in safety patrol once again! It feels good to have some things back to normal! I'm hopeful that as time goes on we will be able to bring back more of our usual community activities and events. Thank you to the parents who are willing to pick their child up a little late and/or drop them off early to allow them this leadership opportunity.

Easley Covid Numbers

Last week Easley reported 1 positive COVID case, 0 close contacts were identified, and there were 0 class closures. Communication to families whose students were identified as close contacts were completed. If you have not already been personally contacted, it means your student was NOT in close contact with any of the COVID-19 cases. Instead of doing daily calls, the district will send out daily emails and the weekly numbers will be reported in this Weekly Update.

Next Year Intent Form

We are currently in the process of planning for next school year. In doing so, we need to have an accurate count of the number of students who are planning to return to Easley next school year (2022-2023). Accurate student numbers will ensure that we do not lose teaching staff and instructional positions. Thus, your participation in this brief survey is very important. PLEASE NOTE: We have also included a section for you to provide any information you think we need to know about your child when making class placements for next year. Please do not make requests for specific teachers. The only exception is if an older child had a teacher and you would like us to consider placing the sibling with the same teacher, or not. We do our bests to honor sibling requests, but please know there is no guarantee as we have a very involved process for creating classroom rosters. Please complete this survey by Friday, March 4th. Thank you!

Easley Intent Form for 2022-2023 School Year - ENGLISH

Easley Intent Form for 2022-2023 School Year - SPANISH

SIT Meetings @ 5:30 PM

February 21

March 7

April 18

May 16

June 6

PTA Meetings @ 6:30 PM

February 21

March 7

April 18

May 16

June 6

COVID Information

Register your child for weekly testing at school

Links to community testing sites

Covid -19 information and resources

Covid Exposure

If a student is directly exposed to a Covid positive individual they must quarantine for five days from the date of exposure. The only exception is if they are fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated students may return to school after an exposure as long as they are not showing symptoms.

The Safe Schools Toolkit states that students who have an exposure to someone in their household may return to school without quarantine, if they are fully vaccinated. While this is listed in the toolkit as the protocol, and is well within your rights to do, we are asking that you consider keeping your fully vaccinated child home for at least five days when someone in the household has tested positive. It has been our experience, in almost every case of someone in the household testing positive, that the other members test positive within 5-6 days.

We've yet to have a great deal of spread in our classrooms which has prevented us from needing to shut down any classrooms and move them to remote learning. This is due to the safety measures our teachers have put in place and also because our families have been really good about keeping students home when they are sick AND keeping home even vaccinated students who have been directly exposed to a household family member with COVID. As always, should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am often inundated with Covid calls and emails so please also copy your child's teacher, Leah Rubow, and Kyra Solomon on the emails as we are all working together to manage Covid related issues. Often times office staff is able to respond more quickly than me.

Siblings

Just a reminder if one child in a household is home due to experiencing COVID symptoms, then all the siblings in that household should stay home until the child with the symptoms has a negative Covid test.

Communicating a Positive Result

If your child has tested positive for Covid or needs to be out due to an exposure, please be sure to let the classroom teacher and school administration now. We will need the following information:

• a screenshot of positive test result
• the date symptoms started

Accessing School While on Quarantine

Students who are out for mandatory quarantine will be provided with asynchronous work from their classroom teachers. There will not be live Zoom for students who are out for those five days. On occasion, a teacher maybe able to Zoom them in for a small group or morning meeting but that is always a case-by-case situation and is not the expectation.

Students who are being kept home out of an abundance of caution will be considered unexcused and we will not be sending home asynchronous work for them. While I understand the concern, it is important that students are in school when they are healthy so they can benefit from the direct instruction and peer interactions.

PTA News: Update/Membership

To purchase PTA memberships or make a donation, please visit: https://easleypta.memberhub.com/store

Easley Spirit Wear

Spirit wear Store. Get all your Easley gear here.