Adena Local Schools

High School Students and Parents, Attached is the immunization for attendance document that all incoming seniors need to view. All seniors will need to have their required immunizations by October 2nd. All in-person class schedules will be mailed out next Thursday. Students attending online will be receiving their schedule at their scheduled appointment next week. A reminder that all new student drivers will need to purchase a parking permit. The cost is $5 and they are available in the high school office. Returning drivers can use their pass from previous years. Please try to get all the required Final Forms documents completed as soon as you can. The school year is approaching fast! We look forward to seeing you soon! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ziK0b98zqBD1Pr2PanqiSfwp7eoRSzq_cIL5KCVlTN0/edit Josh Jones Adena High School Principal

This message is for those high school students attending PRCTC this school year. Juniors attending will start back on August 20th. Seniors attending will start back on August 24th. There will be a bus at the school to transport you to PRCTC. It will be located in the bus pickup/drop off area. The bus will depart at 7:45 a.m. Josh Jones Adena High School Principal

ADENA SCHOOLS LATCHKEY 2020-2021 The Adena Local Schools will be able to offer afternoon latchkey services during the 2020-2021 school year. There will be 18 slots available (and possibly a maximum of 36 if staffing can be obtained) on a first-come first-serve basis. The cost is $5.00 per day, per child and each succeeding child in the family at $4.00 per day. Students must be at least 5 years of age and be no older than 12. Contact Kacey Shaffer to request a registration form at 740-998-4633, (Press Option 3).

Today at 3:00 p.m. the registration for Adena Online Learning will close. Use the following link to register your child. If you have already registered please disregard. https://forms.gle/vGQ3WzeajWFDKyeL8

IMPORTANT CHANGES to ADENA’S CALENDAR PLEASE READ CAREFULLY The restarting of school is underway. We are still awaiting some materials needed for protective barriers but in all, things are going very well. We are, however, going to DELAY the opening of school for students until September 8th to give us time to ensure all materials are in place and also observe the results and make adjustments as we watch districts opening up early. This will also give us time to watch the numbers and data for Ross County which has experienced an increase in infections and hospitalizations recently. We want to be sure we are capable of taking every measure to protect our students and staff. Our goal is still to provide in-person learning and quality remote learning. Thank you for your patience and understanding. The link to view the UPDATED RESTART GUIDE is below. Please contact your building principal if you have questions. https://bit.ly/30xwic1

Pre-K Information

Important Update Adena Local Schools The deadline for signing up for remote learning for the 2020-2021 school year is being extended to Friday, August 7 at 3:00 p.m. As we have established from the beginning, our restart will be subject to change at short notice. Please remain alert for updates. Our shipments of special supplies and equipment are arriving daily. However, if some critical items are delayed it could affect our calendar in the short term. If you have questions regarding remote learning vs in-person learning please contact your building principal as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we prepare for a safe and effective restart of learning.

Due to Health Department guidance, elementary students will not go to their last year's classrooms on the first day of school. This will create a situation for students/teachers to be exposed to more people than necessary. We apologize for this. Students will report to their new classrooms on the first day of school. We will still be conducting a kindergarten promotion ceremony and more details will be sent out next week regarding that. Mrs. Wayland

Good Afternoon, This message is for the high school students and parents. On August 6th, I will begin contacting each parent or guardian that has registered for their student to go online to set up an appointment. Each family will have to come to the school at the scheduled date and time to meet with me to go over the online expectations of the teacher, student, and parent/guardian. If a student does not currently already have a school Chromebook, they will receive one then. Each student will also receive their online schedule. Every student that registers to go online will be required to attend their online classes at the scheduled times. They will have live online instructional classes everyday, except for Friday. They will be in attendance in these online classes for at least two and a half hours a day, during the school day. Each student will also be required to watch pre-recorded lessons when they are assigned. On the days they don’t meet with a teacher, they will be submitting an assignment online that is assigned that day. Other assignments will be assigned throughout the week that connect to the online class sessions. If there are students that have no internet, other arrangements will be made for them and that will be discussed during their appointment. Our staff will be using a combination of Florida Virtual curriculum and their own Google Classroom content for each of their classes. If we do get into the situation where all students end up online, they all will have a set schedule of times in the day they will need to log on and attend their classes. Attendance will be taken in all of these classes. In summary, there will be attendance taken daily for those students attending online. They will be expected to follow their schedule and attend their classes at their scheduled times. Stay patient, positive, and take it one day at time. We will get through this together! Josh Jones Adena High School Principal

This message is for 8th grade students/families who were scheduled to participate in the Annual Washington D.C. trip during the spring 2020. Unfortunately, after talking with the travel company we have decided to cancel the trip this year. We tried our best to reschedule this trip for the Fall but after consulting the travel company we felt this was not a safe time to participate. The Adena Treasurer’s Department is processing the refunds and will be sending the checks out later this week. If you have any questions please contact me via email at dustin.england@adenalocalschools.com. Thank you for your patience and understanding. - Mr. England, Adena MS Principal

Hello! This is an IMPORTANT LINK to the Adena Local Schools “Restart Family Guide.” What you want to know about school opening this year as well as information on our “Remote Learning” option is in this document. Please click the link below and read carefully. If you wish to sign up for Adena Remote Learning this is the time to do so. Read everything carefully and then follow the instructions to sign up if you wish to take advantage of this option. Thank you! https://docs.google.com/document/d/171uSq2j76NokaHPGVjHE3KSO9X0cZqQb-YyNmJm0POQ/edit?usp=sharing

Here is the link to our next district survey. Your input helps us plan. Please take time to answer the questions. We appreciate your help! https://forms.gle/tCRp7rR5YmsVushA6

Quick Update: Adena School Reopening We received some more information, guidelines and directions from the Ohio Department of Education this morning. We will process this information, continue our work and refine our requirement list for opening in the fall. Expect the survey by July 20th at the latest. Many are interested in the start date of school. We intend to begin with a staggered start on the original calendar in order to complete required tasks that have been strongly encouraged by ODE, prepare the students to understand and get ready for new ways of doing things as well as become comfortable with the new practices and procedures of school, and give our very young students the chance to have closure for their previous class and teacher. All students will be attending regularly by Labor Day. We know we won’t start early or insert long breaks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. We know we will respect the Ross County Fair schedule. We will give you plenty of advance notice on the staggered start schedules and any other important information. Please rest assured we are looking at many things and will prepare you to ease into the 2021 school year with as little stress as possible. We know it is hard to wait for information, but our intent is to not get in a hurry and get it done correctly. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Have a great weekend!

District Update from Superintendent John Balzer These are definitely “trying times” for all of us as we try to find our way through the COVID 19 pandemic. We want to give you a general update on what we are doing as we prepare to have school in August. First, we have to put aside all politics, social media myths, debates (and occasional rants) to examine the real science of this virus and determine what we need to do in order to provide a safe environment for our students and our staff while they are at school. Safety always has to be the first priority. Remember, we also have to think about students’ families- many caregivers are grandparents who are in a high-risk category. We have to remember that some student’s parents or siblings may be undergoing cancer treatments or have pre-existing health conditions that place them in high risk groups. We must remember that when we bring all the kids to school, we also set up a situation where viruses can be distributed throughout the community in a highly efficient manner. It’s up to us to see to it that if we have school all are protected and we do all we can to prevent the spread of COVID. We are working with the Ohio Department of Education guidelines established by the Governor’s office. We have the guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics. We are working with the Ross County Health Department as well. It is our goal to provide five days per week instruction for all students who wish to attend. We are developing an online school program for students who wish to learn from home until there is a sanctioned vaccine available. At this point in time, we believe that students need the opportunity to attend school for the social benefit and to receive the needed instruction along with the benefits of participating in the extra-curricular activities that balance out the overall educational program in order to create a well-rounded student. The focus each day should easily be learning and socialization with safety practices quietly in place in the background of day to day operations. In order for the district to provide the opportunities our students should receive, we will need the support and cooperation of parents, caregivers and the community. The politics removed, we have to create a safe environment that is practical, manageable, and doesn’t cause unnecessary stress to, or frighten our children- especially our little ones. If we can work together to accomplish the necessary safeguards that would enable us to bring all 1200 students back to the building, we can offer our students something very close to schooling they experienced prior to the arrival of COVID. Now that we finally have the Ohio guidelines, our next steps are to establish the needed plans for operations in large congregate settings like lunch, transportation, hallway traffic, playground and extracurriculars. We have to implement extra sanitation practices with the custodial staff. There will be stricter limitations on access to the building from the public. We believe we can accomplish this if we can get all stakeholders to cooperate and support our efforts to reopen. We need to hear your voices. We will be sending an important survey out in the coming days to get your input. Please help us by taking the time to sit down and participate in the process. Remember, nobody is going to be completely happy about how things will look going forward. It is complicated, it is frustrating and it is sometimes very tense. We owe it to our children to leave them out of all of the politics and turmoil that only create fear and unrest in their minds. I think we as a community can come together and establish common ground over what are appropriate and acceptable precautionary measures that will allow us to safely resume school- the one thing that keeps our children feeling like things are pretty “normal.” The Village has always come through for the children in the past, and I have no doubt we can do that in this situation as well. Together, we will find a way to work through what might be the most important issue of the pandemic. When our kids look back at this part of our history and tell their children about it, let’s hope their response will be that, “We were Warrior Strong and worked to make sure we all got through it together.” As the district leader, I sincerely appreciate your interest and support in the school system. I look forward to working with the community to accomplish this very important work. Stay well and do your part in helping keep the community safe!

This message is for parents of current students enrolled at Adena Local Schools. Tomorrow, July 1, you will receive an account confirmation email from Final Forms. If you do not receive it please check your junk mail. Please click the link in the email and follow the steps to login and access your student(s). Final Forms allows you to complete and sign enrollment, back-to-school and athletic participation forms for your students. You may review your data at any time to verify it is current. Documentation can also be found at https://tinyurl.com/yacczquk This process will replace the majority of back to school paperwork you normally fill out at the beginning of the school year.

Prom will be Saturday, July 18th at the Sunroom at the Brick. Dinner will start at 7 p.m. with the dance immediately following until 11 p.m. Tickets are $5 for MADE members that can show their card and $10 for non MADE members. Tickets are presale only and can be purchased Monday, July 6, Tuesday, July 7, and Wednesday, July 8 from noon to 2 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in front of the school. There was a dance waiver and a Southern Ohio Axe Throwing waiver sent to the juniors and seniors through their school email. Both forms must be signed by a parent and turned in at the time of ticket purchase. Please print those and bring them with you when you come to purchase your ticket or bring a parent with you to sign the forms. No exceptions! Thanks and I can't wait to see you all when you purchase your tickets. Ms. Tara Mess

The Adena Local Schools would like thank Mr. Carvel Simmons for generously volunteering to pay off all outstanding lunch charges for all students. The generosity and kindness of the local community makes Adena a great place to live, learn and grow. Thank you Mr. Simmons for your care and concern. Thank you for your civic leadership, Mr. Simmons. Together, we are Warrior Strong!

We are very excited to announce that the Adena Local Schools has partnered with FinalForms, an online forms and data management service that will be replacing the majority of our paper forms. FinalForms allows you to complete and sign enrollment, back-to-school and athletic participation forms for your students. The most exciting news is that FinalForms saves data from season-to-season and year-to-year, meaning that you will never need to enter the same information twice! FinalForms also pre-populates information wherever possible, for each of your students, saving you time. You may review your data at any time to verify it is current. You will be required to sign your forms once per year and after any update. On July 1, You will receive an account confirmation email from FinalForms. Please click the link and follow the steps to login and access your student(s). We will have documentation that will help you with any issues/questions that may arise. That documentation will be sent out prior to July 1. We will also be available for assistance inside the building if you have problems.

Please follow this link for pictures of the Adena High School Graduation Ceremony. Courtesy of Cassidy Dawn Photography. https://cassidydawn.pixieset.com/2020adenagraduation/

Only students that borrowed a chromebook in Pre-K-8th grade will need to return their chromebooks this afternoon. All HS students excluding graduating seniors will keep their chromebooks over the summer. Curbside dropoff is from 3-6 PM this afternoon in the front of the building.