Community Letter 9-6-21

Michaelmas, Michaelmas,

the time to show both courage and form,

Look well around you, inside you must wake.

Trees may shake, I shall stand the storm.

– C.A. Lindenberg

Dear ROCS Community,

Similar to other Waldorf school’s across the globe, we are preparing to celebrate Michaelmas to find hope and honor the strength of human will, courage and initiative. I mention this story because it parallels our own human challenges, and we can relate it to our current experience dealing with COVID-19 and the stress it causes within our community. Michaelmas is a helpful reminder of our community's strength as we start our new school year.

COVID and Attendance Update:

With three weeks of in-person, full school days under our belts, I acknowledge that our community is stronger than we ever knew, and I want to thank you for your resilience. We have strong teacher leadership and as a new leader at ROCS, I am here to use my strengths as I support the teachers and our community. I understand that my support and communication will help build your trust in me. The highest determining factor of successful outcomes in student learning is the quality of teachers, and the second determining factor is the quality of their administrator. We are building a partnership with each other and strengthening our community, and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in the years to come!

At ROCS, our goal is to provide high quality in-person instruction to our students while continuing to balance COVID testing and reporting.

Attendance: As the year unfolds, we need to remind everyone the importance of attending school. Our school receives its funding from the State of California based on a formula that is calculated using the number of students that attend ROCS. This number is often referred to as ADA, which stands for Average Daily Attendance. To receive money from the State, the student must actually be present in class. The State does not count excused absences in the ADA for funding purposes. If a student is absent for any reason, including COVID, we do not get funding for that student that day.

COVID and Attendance: We follow guidelines from Mendocino County Public Health (MCPH) and California Department of Public Health (CDPH), and our COVID cases have been community based so far, NOT SCHOOL based. When you choose to have your child stay home, not only do they miss the instruction and social experiences, we lose funding for our school. On Thursday, over 50 students didn’t come to school. This is an approximate loss of $3000 that we will not receive to pay for salaries, supplies, and facilities.

Independent study helps with funding, but only for 15 days because California changed the rules and laws around independent study which makes it impossible for us to have a long term independent study program. We simply do not have the staffing needed. If you choose to use your 15 days for the year, please talk to your teacher. Once you have reached 15 days, you will need to enroll in Ukiah Unified School District’s independent study program (or some other IS program) and disenroll from ROCS.

We commit to keeping families informed when COVID may be present in your student’s learning environment. One key tactic to keeping students and staff at school for in-person learning is the MCPH and CDPH recommendation that allows properly masked students and vaccinated staff to continue with in-person learning when deemed a close contact. Please know ROCS will continue to notify parents/guardians if their student is determined to be a close contact, even if that means they do NOT need to quarantine at home.

Additionally, you can look at the covid dashboard on our school website. We track the number of active cases across our campus, collaborate with MCPH to determine if a case is community or school based, and then update the dashboard. It is updated at the end of each week.

Another uncertainty that COVID brings to our operations is the ability to adequately staff our school. Our school needs a PE teacher, an attendance secretary, and certificated substitute teachers. There is a statewide teacher shortage, and we need your help to spread the word. Here’s a link to our current job openings.

With our combined strength of will and inner courage, we can face the darkness together and shine a bright light to guide us through the year ahead!

Yours in Partnership,

Kristi McCullough