January 14, 2022
Dear UA Parents,
Happy New Year to the UA Community,
I hope you have all had an excellent start to 2022. Our first week back has gone very well given the circumstances. Once again we are returning from a break with COVID front and centre in our planning and organization. I believe that the UA community will once again come together to help us minimize the impacts of the new Omicron virus while maintaining as much of our educational program as possible.
As I mentioned last week, Fraser Health will no longer be providing information regarding positive cases, and contract tracing is no longer taking place. Instead, self-monitoring is how we will move forward, with individuals required to complete a daily health check every day before coming to school. For questions about when a child should isolate, attend school or not attend, please refer back to our Communicable Disease Plan. Also, starting on Monday, January 17 we will be required to report student illness numbers to the Ministry daily to help inform them of what is taking place in schools. For that reason, we will be implementing a new attendance form that we are asking parents to start using beginning Monday, January 17 which will help us organize our attendance data. The form can be found here.
For the next few weeks, parents please complete this form each day that your child is away. Of course, emailing attendance@urbanacademy.ca or phoning in will still work, but we may need to follow up to clarify the reason for your child’s absence. This is a short-term request. When we report to the Ministry, no personal data is shared, just the total number of students at each grade level. The data will also be of benefit for us as it will inform our staff about what is happening in school and will assist us in making informed decisions if necessary. Thank you in advance for helping us through what I hope is only a few weeks.
We are taking things week by week at this point in terms of experiential education opportunities and trips away from the school. We are monitoring things very closely and will review every outing through a safety lens before allowing it to happen. Our goal is to maintain our educational program within the scope of what is happening in the community and what is safe. If we do move forward with a field trip or event and parents are hesitant, you will have the option to have your child not participate.
Finally, switching gears a little bit, a BIG thank you to all the families who have contributed to our Annual Appeal at this point. We are now at $120,000 of our $130,000 goal for this year. That represents 42% of our families who have participated, and I know we can get to our goal in the next few weeks if you would still like to contribute to help us reach it! These funds will make such a difference to our students with new and improved furniture and sound dampening measures to improve sound quality in the classrooms.
Stay well and stay positive. While things may be challenging right now, I am confident that as the calendar turns ever closer to spring that we will see things improve on so many fronts.
Yours in education,
Mr. Slinger
