After all the back and forth starts and stops, it looks like we are all deeply involved in reopening now!
I know that so many of you have been in long planning meetings and difficult conversations with staff and community members. It’s hard to look ahead when there are still so many unknowns about what life and school will look like.
It’s incredible to think of all that we’ve experienced in the last twelve months. 2020 was hard and full of surprises but maybe 2021 doesn’t have to be. Here’s a quick recap of the trends we’ve seen so far this year in case it helps you and your teams.
Getting a handle on people’s preferences and changes (understand where everyone is)
- Our team saw staff surveys, requests to work remotely, retirement and resignation forms, verifications of employment, and vaccine attestations all last month along with inter and intra district transfer forms for students and reconfirming hybrid or fully remote back to school options
Finding opportunities for flexibility and reorganization
- With people still finding their footing and so much catching up to do, many of you have created forms for temporary role reassignments or out of class work
- Some of you have tapped into staff and community networks to find volunteers able to help with backlogs in student assessments and services
Making sure staff and parents are able to communicate issues or incidents quickly
- We’re now trending towards communications with parents informing them of safety plans and new policies and procedures
- Many of you have also created employee safety reporting forms, staff and student incident reports, and potential exposure notifications
Focus on socio-emotional learning, services, and extracurricular programs for students
- While the full impact on children after this year is still unclear, many of you are preparing to provide support and increase accessibility for families on all fronts
- We are seeing an uptick in all forms for extra curriculars, clubs, student activity budgeting requests and ASB, sports (including coaches contracts), and student work permits as well as application forms for programs that mitigate learning loss (summer school and ESY) and vital services supporting student health and mental health (COST and medical forms)
Our team has been updating many employee onboarding packets, PK, TK, and Kindergarten enrollment packets now that hiring and new student enrollment is picking up. With bus services and general driving and travel reduced significantly last year, we saw reimbursement, conference, and other request forms slow down but we’re expecting usage on these to start again too. There are new tax forms and rate changes, so please feel free to reach out any time.
As always, our team is happy to help and share templates with you. There is so much to do!
There will be learnings to unpack and much more ahead for sure, but for now, I think we can look forward to one thing that is certain, and that is just how happy we will be to finally see you again in person :)
We appreciate you and all your hard work, THANK YOU,
Sarah
