Tuesday, December 1st, 2020
RE: December Learning at Home and Learning at School!
We have had a few questions about learning from home and we wanted to clarify the information for everyone. On November 24th, the Government of Alberta announced new provincial health measures that impacted schools. The order stated that students from kindergarten to Grade 6 are to continue to come to school. As a result, our school is not impacted by the learning at home order, at this time. We will be learning from home from January 4th-8th and more information on this will come. Pembina Hills is not expecting teachers to provide instruction for students in class and at home at the same time with the following exceptions. Teachers will provide instruction at home in the following situations:
• When a class or group has to isolate because of their close contact to an individual in their cohort who tested positive. In this situation, the teacher will provide support for learning at home to the whole class.
• When the whole class is expected to be learning at home from January 4th to 8th. In this situation, the teacher will provide instruction for the whole class while they learn from home.
• When individual students are sick and need to stay home. In this situation, teachers will provide short term work to keep up with the class (as possible, depending on the nature of their illness).
As per the government announcement, learning in class is still continuing for all kindergarten to Grade 6 students in Alberta. As a result, if parents choose to keep their children home in December (or for reasons outside of the exceptions listed above), those students will be considered absent and they will miss a significant amount of class instruction. Should this cause concern, parents may seek exemptions from in-class learning by contacting their teacher and school principal. These requests will be sent to the Director of Student Services who, in consultation with principal and teacher, will make the final decision. We do continue to follow AHS guidelines in ensuring our school is as safe as possible for everyone and look forward to a fantastic month of December learning together and finishing the year of 2020!