Posted November 16, 2021
As you may be aware, there is a national teacher shortage that has impacted DPS and in particular our school, Bear Valley. In order to ensure that we keep our scheduling and daily operational capacity consistent to maintain our doors open, we need to redo our schedule. This will maximize our current staff and allow us to close current staffing gaps.
The second semester schedule will include having two Integrated Arts classes. By reducing our school day by one Integrated Arts class period, this will allow our current staff to run a full schedule. As such, we are considering having a soft start. This means that our doors will open at 7:30AM and we will provide breakfast for all students, including a place to offer a study hall. The first instructional class will begin at 8:10AM and students will not be marked tardy if they arrive prior to this time.
In addition to reducing one of our elective classes and rebalancing our classes the district has approved an early release on Tuesdays. Currently teachers are covering classes due to the substitute shortage and we are missing out on vital planning time for strong instruction. By doing an early release one day a week we can provide protected time for our teachers to plan strong lessons and to collaborate with one another in better support of students and student behaviors.
We know that changes to our daily schedule are impactful for our families and we want to give you time to prepare. Our primary goal is to ensure that we have programming that will support all our scholars. This year has been very challenging and we want to do everything possible to support our students, our school needs, including our staffing shortages.
Please use this link to fill out a family survey that will give us important information to plan for the second semester.
If you were unable to join us for our Principal Advisory Meeting last Thursday, please visit our website to review the November Slide deck as well as watch the meeting video as these Semester 2 changes are discussed in length.
Feel free to contact the school if you have any questions,
Proud Principal