Escalante Middle School

Dear Escalante Middle School Community, 8/5/2020

As of today, about twenty-five percent of our families have selected a model of learning for the coming school year. Yesterday, we conducted two live Zoom sessions to assist people who had questions about their selection.

If you would like to view a recording of the session, you can watch it by following the link below. The first thirty minutes covers safety procedures. The second thirty minutes gives information about the set-up of our schedule and explains the three models:

5 days in person
Blended home and remote
100% remote

After I viewed the recording, it is clear that I have a long way to go before I’m ready for a television career! While it will be short on entertainment, you will find detailed information on our plans for next year. Sorry, but we were unable to download the chat for some reason. See the 8/04/2020 Zoom Community Updates link below:

Once your family has selected a learning model, please complete the school district’s form as soon as possible. The deadline is August 10th. If you have already filled out the form, but have changed your mind, you can fill out the survey again and we will go with the most recent survey. See the link to the form below.

As soon as we have all of the information from the selection form, we will begin to build our Crews for next year. Keep in mind that we will be forming all new crews this year due to the strict guidelines set out by the state. The most restrictive safety measure on our scheduling is that students will be with their Crew for the entire day - we will go to great lengths to avoid any mixing of our student cohorts. Because social interaction is so important for our students, we are making attempts to pair each student with at least one friend who they work well with. If you would like us to consider social connections for your child, you can complete the form below to help guide our decisions when we build cohorts. This survey will close on the 10th as well. See the link to that survey below.

I have a few other updates to share with our school community.

Athletics: The state has postponed fall and winter athletics to the Spring. Depending on the local circumstances, we will have all of our middle school sports’ seasons compacted into our Spring athletic season. As we get closer to February, we will share information about sports. Volleyball and football will not start next week. We will provide updates when we receive clarification on our ability to resume a program on an intramural level.

Delayed Start to the School Year: Last night, our school board pushed back the start of our school year to August 31st.

Back to School Night Zoom Style and a new School Day Preview Event at Escalante will be scheduled during the week of August 24th. Even though we will be delaying school, we will be using that time to prepare students and families for the school year. As soon as we have dates selected, I will email them out, but your attendance at these events will be instrumental to our ability to have a successful launch for our school year.

Thank you for your patience, input, and participation as we prepare for the 2020-2021 school year.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Voss and David Tanaka
EMS, Administration

Message from the Principals 8/05/2020