Dear Topeka Public Schools Family,
Thank you for your support, flexibility and understanding as we opened for the 2021 year. While our staff had low COVID transmission rates, the administration felt it was best to offer some in-person learning for our scholars. Our board supports in-person learning for an extended period while in an orange rating on the county scorecard and we are following that plan. We thank our board for allowing us to open to serve some initial needs while our internal district staff scorecard was below an orange rating. With an extended community spread of red for many weeks, we anticipate the district scorecard will increase as well to a red rating as staff interacts with the community. In a district as large as Topeka, the virus can spread rapidly and like many universities, we will have to remain remote until the spread declines to an orange rating. As one impact from the spread, last week, our substitute vendor lost all of their subs as the virus and the community spread has prevented them from returning at this time. Without enough staff, we simply cannot safely serve all of the needs.
We are fortunate we have an alternative learning platform to use until it's safe to return in person and we do hope informing families one week in advance was helpful before we have any staffing issues we can't cover in future weeks. We know our parents need advance notice. We thank our families for supporting allowing teachers to teach in the safest possible way so they do not have a significant health risk when there is an alternative platform that could be used. While in-person these two weeks,
technology issues preventing remote learning were fixed,
family tragedies that impacted students over the winter were addressed in-person,
supplies were replenished.
Additionally, the high school seniors helped us plan our first mid-year graduation and TCALC expanded their courses. TCALC and many programs will continue offering as many instructional opportunities as possible in-person. If a family has a critical need, schools are providing assistance in various ways and we encourage you to contact your child's principal. All high schools are providing some limited opportunities in-person for continued academic, extra-curricular and social-emotional support. To ensure the high red rating has limited impact on our district with over 13,100 students and 2,500 staff in the future, we are using this time advocating for vaccines and our first group of district health professionals have been vaccinated. Thank you for your understanding and support. You can view my parent message about reopening and remote learning in English here and in Spanish here.
Dr. Tiffany Anderson
Superintendent