IMPORTANT MAKE UP DAY INFORMATION: Sept.8th school closure make-up day will be Jan. 5th 2015 Dear ALA Parents, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank our administrators, faculty, staff, parents and students for pulling together this week despite the serious obstacle that the recent flooding posed. It is not often (nor, perhaps, ever again) that we encounter a challenge of this nature. In the spirit of leadership and in true ALA fashion, in the early hours of the morning, several groups of people mobilized to collect relevant data, put in place contingencies, broadcast updates, and work cooperatively to make crucial and timely decisions so that the crisis could be dealt with and school could resume quickly. I am grateful for the help but also the understanding and patience of our ALA family who has supported us in what has turned out to be a fantastic week and another brilliant commemoration of 9/11 and our patriotic legacy. I would also like to take some time here to respond to some frequently asked questions about what the residual impact of this “rain day” might be. Please take the time to review this important information with your family, and, and as always, feel free to reach out to myself or your campus administration for more details. Will another day be added to the ALA calendar to make up for this missed day of school? Yes. Although the ADE does not require that we make up this day lost to natural catastrophe, we will be adding January 5th (the Monday returning from the December Holiday Break) as an instructional day. We do this for two reasons: 1. We (along with a number of Arizona schools) have recently discovered that we may be misaligned with state statute by allowing a break to exceed two weeks [A.R.S. 15-801(B.)] We have significant justification for our current calendar and why it was established in the first place, but in the interest of full compliance we have chosen to make the revision. 2. With the loss of a full day of school and preparation for AIMs being at a premium, it makes sense to replace the instructional time. What considerations have been made for teachers and families who might already have plans in place that would be disrupted by the change? January 5th was always slated as a professional day for faculty and staff. There should be minimal to no disruption to our staff’s plans, as they were already required to return to school for professional development. We are encouraging all our faculty to designate January 5th as a review day only. No tests, projects, or homework should be assigned that day. We will still be conducting meaningful instruction, but not initiating anything new that would place our students who are unable to attend at a disadvantage. Furthermore, our front office will designate any student checked out on January 5th by their parents for any reason as an excused absence. Why were students marked Excused Absent on Monday when the school was not even open to attend? Upon instruction from the ADE, all students were marked Excused Absent for Monday, September 8. This was not an internal ALA decision, has no bearing on our funding, and does not affect your students’ standing in the school in any way. How does this affect my student’s Perfect Attendance record? This excused absence will not be counted towards any awards, recognitions, or discipline relative to your student’s record. If they are currently on track for perfect attendance before the Monday Rain Day, their record (barring any other absence) will remain intact. How can we receive timely updates about future closures or other emergent events? There were several factors that had to be weighed in before the decision was made to close the school; the most important (and ultimately the deciding) of which was the safety of our students and staff. Once the decision was made information was broadcast via email (we use Constant Contact, a web based service), our student information system (Infinite Campus/Parent Portal), the Facebook pages of each of our campuses, our Website, and also through various local media services (Fox news, AZ direct, etc.) We are now also looking at other web applications that would help us generate mass texts for situations like this and other crucial updates. Several of your campuses are currently running a pilot to test the services of remind to determine if it has the functionality for our needs. If it is successful, this is something that will be used school wide. Parents would need to register for the app voluntarily to receive updates from that service. Further information about this service would be conveyed in your weekly campus newsletter.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 22:26:44 +0000
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