Message from the Head of School, May 20

Dear SAAS Community,

In the Fall of 1983, a group of dedicated educators, parents, and students were determined to open a new school. They had a clear sense of what they could accomplish, they had confidence in each other, and they were willing to dive in to turn a Dream into Reality.

The challenge? They didn’t yet have a mission statement, a curriculum, the money to hire faculty and staff, or a building to house a school.

October of 2020 will mark the 37th anniversary of the founding of SAAS. And while a lot has changed in thirty-seven years, this much hasn’t:

SAAS is a nimble, creative, and resilient community. I believe that the call in our mission to “question, imagine, and create in order to contribute boldly to a changing world” is accurate and aspirational.

As we navigate this pandemic together, I’m awed by the collective will of the SAAS community to live up to our Mission, to pull together in a time of crisis, and to take care of each other in the present while looking together towards the future. As any coach knows, the key is to teach players to simultaneously keep their eye on the ball and to see the whole field.

As the 2019-20 school year draws to a close, I want you to know that we’ve been hard at work attending to both of those imperatives: we’re keeping our eye on the ball as we finish the 2019-2020 school year, while looking up to see the field in our planning for the 2020-21 school year.

We’ve been in conversations with educators across the country, and we’ve also been consulting broadly with doctors, lawyers, public health officials, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. The SAAS Senior Admin has been meeting regularly to plan for the Fall, we’ve brought together a Leadership team specifically focused on Fall scenario planning, and we have also convened a Board Advisory Task Force. And, we’ve listened to the many voices of our students.

My goal in this letter is to provide you with an update on how we’re thinking about and planning for the Fall. We’ll be communicating to the SAAS community throughout the summer, as our plans will mature and we’ll be informed by the Governor’s plans for the state, particularly with regard to reopening schools. So please consider this an ongoing conversation rather than a definitive “Here’s what’s happening.”

Here is what “Seeing the Field” means in our planning for the 2020-21 school year:

If we can have students on campus in the Fall, we will.

It’s critical that we open, if at all possible, for the sake of our students, our families, and our socio-economic well-being as a city and nation. So let me say it again, so that we’re all on the same page: If we can open physically, we will.

In terms of what that will look like, we will be guided by the requirements the Governor’s office will provide to schools and by the importance of mitigating risk in as many ways as we can. That will mean that being together in some fashion on campus will require social distancing measures that will, in turn, require ingenuity in how we think about space, schedule, transportation; in short, being willing to rethink almost everything from how it has traditionally been done in schools.  

In all scenarios, we are placing the greatest priority on safety, which means planning for ongoing social distancing and sanitation measures in classrooms, the hallways, and all the in-between times that make up the school day.

Physical safety may require that we forego the kinds of large community events—games, performances, and assemblies—we value so highly. It may require wearing masks to school, testing, and will certainly require rethinking things like communal meals and overnight retreats until we have a vaccine in place.

Having in-person school within this new reality will require individual and collective agility, resilience, and a comfort with ambiguity which are all hallmarks of the SAAS community.

 

Schedule flexibility will be a crucial tool in the tool box.

We are going to have to mitigate risks where we can and in ways that we haven’t had to think about in the past. “Social distancing” is a term we’ve become all-too-familiar with, and it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future. It requires us to think more creatively about the school day and will likely translate to fewer students in each classroom, necessitating some version of an alternating schedule in which some students are on campus while others are online.

Schools across the country are considering a range of schedule models, and schools in other countries have already been experimenting with new schedules that allow them to meet on campus while mitigating risk. We’re looking at those models, as well as ways to address how students and faculty move around campus between classes.

Flexibility might well mean that we are operating on some kind of alternating schedule, with some students on campus, some online off campus, and with those groups rotating between in-person class and online class. In the event that we need to do that, it will be because it gives us the best chance to achieve the goal stated above, which is “If we can have students on campus in the Fall, we will.” But if we are operating with an alternating schedule, I believe it also will be important for us to provide a place for students who need somewhere at school to do their online learning.

We understand that each family may have different challenges. Some of our parents will continue to have the option to work from home, although having their kids doing online school will be a significant impediment for the family. For other parents, working from home is not even an option, and their being able to go to work will require that their kids be at school. We are working toward having a place at school for all students for whom staying at home is not viable, even if that means that during their “online rotation” time, they’re in a space at SAAS that is more like a large, open study hall setting than a classroom. That scenario would not be ideal, but it would provide the means for parents to go to work and take care of their families.

It will also be important for us to continue to provide opportunities for students to participate in arts, athletics, and robotics activities that have traditionally occurred after school. Again, given social distancing requirements, we’ll need to get creative—some sports like soccer and volleyball could be pushed to the spring, for example.

 

Online learning will be an ongoing element of any plan, and potentially the primary option that we will need to provide for some students.

We have to embrace online learning for next year for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, it will be an essential option for some of our students who are themselves in a vulnerable group relative to the virus or who have family members who are particularly vulnerable. To put it more directly, students have to have the option to continue their schooling online for the duration of this pandemic.

Online learning will also be a key tool in the toolbox relative to hybrid instruction models that allow us to return to campus physically while maintaining social distancing. A likely scenario is that some percentage of students will be in a physical classroom with their teacher, while other students will be taking that exact same class at the same time but online in another room on campus or at home; while yet other students in that class will have chosen to be taking all of their classes online for the year.

Finally, we have to recognize that if cases of the virus spike in our area, there may be new “Stay at Home” orders, returning everyone to online mode for some period of time. Readiness to transition between models is embedded in our planning process for next year.

So in all of those scenarios, online learning will be part of the landscape, and that means committing as a school to continuous improvement in how we design and deliver it.

 

Inclusive Community: Rising to the Challenge

One of our fundamental goals at all times, and all the more so in times of stress and crisis, is to keep the community whole. That means making it possible for kids to get the best SAAS education possible, whether that’s in a hybrid form, back at SAAS in the Fall, or online.

Keeping our community whole means coming up with options that allow parents to go back to work knowing their kids are cared for and are connected with the community.

Keeping our community whole requires that we protect the physical health and well-being of our faculty and staff.

And keeping our community whole means providing financial aid to those who need it. There are families who currently receive financial aid who will need more. There are families who have struggled to pay the SAAS tuition but haven’t qualified for financial aid who will need it now. And there are families in the SAAS community who never dreamed they’d need financial aid, but who are reeling from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

Please know that it is our goal to provide the financial aid that our families need to stay at SAAS. Please reach out if you need financial assistance—our goal is to help every family who wants to stay at SAAS to do so.

I mentioned earlier that this would be an ongoing conversation, and it will be. Please join me tonight for a Town Hall event starting at 7:00 where this discussion will continue. I’ll share updates on the school, answer questions from you in the virtual audience, and provide additional context on re-opening for the Fall. Information on how to connect to that meeting is provided below.

In closing, I’d like to return to the beginning.

The school was founded in the midst of uncertainty in the Fall of 1983; the founders didn’t have a building, a budget, faculty, or a Head of School, but that didn’t stop them.

Here’s how I described those first students and parents and teachers and leaders, in a letter written last Fall honoring the founding of SAAS:

That first courageous group of 70 students were supported by parents who were committed to nurturing their unique and creative potential. Those first SAAS students were supported and encouraged by a committed faculty who were inspired by a compelling vision of what education can and should be. And the students, parents, and faculty were led by an administration and Board guided by an unshakable belief in the power of a collaborative and inclusive community.

          Those first SAAS students and teachers and parents in 1983 were brave and nimble and curious and determined; those are all traits that are important in the creation of something new and important and complex.

 

The Takeaway?

 

These are uncertain times, but I’m certain of this: We can do this together. If any school in the country can figure out a way to open up this Fall in ways that are flexible, creative, safe, and sustainable, it’s going to be us. Like the founders of SAAS, we, too, are a brave and nimble and curious and determined community.  

Those words describe the way we’ve risen to the challenge this Spring and how we’ll come together to create what will essentially be our own new school in the Fall.

I continue to be grateful to be a part of this community and for your ongoing support, generosity, and commitment. And I’m reminded time and again of how important it is that we look out for each other, that we stand for the values we hold dear, and that we are unwavering in our commitment to strengthening the bonds in our communities.

Regards,

Rob

SAAS Town Hall with Rob Phillips, Head of School

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

7 - 8:30 PM

Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/94928759210 

We hope you can join us for a Town Hall with Rob Phillips, Head of School. Rob will be answering questions from the audience. Submit questions in advance here.