Weekly Letter 9/26/2020

Hello Community, This week was our annual board retreat--it was a little different than years past--we met on zoom.  Great new ideas were discussed and we look forward to sharing some of the new plans with you.  

We are always looking for new board members if you have any interest in joining us please contact any of the board members for information.  

The current board members are as follows:

Nicole Garcia: President

Barnaby Pung: Vice President

Mathias Kirch: Secretary

Hillary Baldwin Steller

Craig Lenard

Shana Barker

Bridgette Carr

Rahul Bhatnager

Aaron Larson

The board voted to extend our current online instructional plan until November 1. The Executive Order requires the board to review the plan at each monthly board meeting. When reviewing the plan, the board will solicit feedback from the community. That feedback will be posted on the transparency page of our website along with student participation rates. The board also extended kudos to the teachers, staff, students and their families for working so hard to make online learning work. Thank you to everyone.

If you have not read the emails about all the exciting fundraisers the PTO and the Foundation are doing please take a look.  Families have had spontaneous meet ups at the Little Caesar's Pizza truck, while fundraising for Honey Creek and chowing down on pizza!  The foundation is rolling out the targeted giving plan. 

As of now we are staying on course with online learning.  Hopefully a rhythm has started to emerge among all the new and different learning events.  We are doing our best to keep you informed.  If you have any questions please reach out to me.

On another note, the teacher shortage in Michigan and across the country continues to grow. If you know someone who is interested in education, please share the attached document with them. Schools are in great need of educators in all of the shortage ares listed.

Thank you, stay well!

Al

September 18, 2020

Al Hello Community,

Thank you for all your patience with the beginning of this year. It has been a doozy! Hopefully you are all finding rhythm in the start of school and managing your Honey Creek/ work/ life balance. If you have any questions or concerns please let me know. The calendar and weekly schedule are on the website.

The state has required all districts to provide an Extended Covid-19 Learning Plan. The plan requires me to report weekly student interaction rates at each board meeting. It also requires us to solicit public comments on our learning plan at each meeting. The comments will be posted on our website.

To address some of the challenges that we are seeing with reporting requirements, ongoing construction meetings, and meetings and training related to the pandemic, I have made a temporary administrative change. As Sue Hofbauer is not presently supervising lunch and aftercare, she will be serving as our acting principal while we are online. We have also had some staffing changes. Nicole Rippy will be providing Speech and Language services. Brianna Dotson will be providing K-3 Special Ed services and also English Language Learner services. Anna Webber has joined the school as our Social Worker. I hope you will take the time to introduce yourself and welcome our new staff members to the school once we return to in person instruction.

The pandemic has led to delays in construction of our new building, but the pace has picked up and we should be seeing more new construction over the next few months. I’ll update you once we have a better idea of the completion date.

Thank you to the PTO for organizing the online walk/run-a-thon. Great Job to everyone and special kudos to the winners of the raffles. Excellent job!

Stay Healthy

Al