Thursday Flyer 9/10/2020

Reopening Update

A couple school districts have sent out 'we're reopening' notes. These notes are based on the assumption that the County Health mandated PCOE COVID-19 testing sites for public school staff and students will be 'fully up and running' by next week. I remain skeptical that's going to be the case. When the details get finalized regarding the testing protocols for the PCOE COVID-19 testing sites, I will share them with you. Further, as you’ve probably read by now, Dr. Sisson, the Placer County Public Health Doctor, resigned yesterday, which has added more uncertainty regarding school reopening requirements within the County.

School District Superintendents, Charter School Executive Directors, County Superintendent Garbolino-Mojica and County Public Health Staff have been meeting at least once per week since March coordinating our COVID-19 responses. During yesterday’s meeting, County Public Health staff indicated that they MAY mandate a ‘soft reopening’ for all public schools with a 50% capacity limit to start.

While I understand the logic behind a 'hybrid' school start to site-based instruction from a public health standpoint, it's less than ideal from an educational perspective, and I recognize it could be logistically difficult for parents. Supposedly, we will be learning by 9/17/20 if we’ll have a 50% opening mandate and for how long it’s supposed to be.

Regardless of all of these variables, my goal remains to bring all of our students safely back to site-based instruction as soon as we are allowed to by all the various entities involved. At this time, my goal is a return to site-based instruction on Monday, September 28th. Assuming we get definitive answers from County Leadership next week on the issues I outlined above, I sincerely hope that I will be able to make that our official return to site-based instruction.

YEARBOOK PHOTO CHALLENGES

MMCA Yearbook Photo Challenges are a way for the whole school community to help the yearbook committee collect pictures and create some great content for the yearbook.

Please note-All Photo Challenge Submissions will be accepted until the end of November. Take your time to get a good picture and please submit ONLY ONE PHOTO per Mustang for each photo challenge. (submit a sibling group picture OR individual pictures of your mustangs, NOT BOTH)

jpegs only, no compressed files, please put the photo challenge name in the subject of your email and your mustang's name in the email

email your photo to: mmcayb@gmail.com

Photo Challenges:

First Day - Your Mustang on the First Day of School

Masked Mustang - Your Mustang in their Favorite Face Covering

Study Buddies - Your Mustang in Distance Learning mode with your family pet

Distance Learning Work Stations -Your Mustang at work in their At Home Work Station

More Photo Challenges to be announced!

Join the Yearbook Committee

Earn all 40 of your parent volunteer hours in one fun job! Email mmcayb@gmail.com if you are interested in joining the yearbook committee.

Data Confirmation

If you haven't already, please log into your Portal Account with Aeries (https://aeriesportal.placercoe.k12.ca.us/Parent/MMCA/LoginParent.aspx ) and complete the data confirmation. After logging in, go to the Student Info tab and select Data Confirmation. It will have you confirm parent contact info, emergency contact info, medical information, read and acknowledge several policies, etc. Then please print the emergency card, review, sign, and bring it to the office. It is important that we have all contact and medical information on your child's emergency card. We will refer to this if there is ever a medical emergency with your child.

Hot Lunch Update- BIG NEWS, READ HERE!

Beginning immediately, Maria Montessori Charter Academy will serve lunch at no charge to children 18 years of age and younger, regardless of eligibility.

Based on a federal program, we are able to offer this service to all families through December of this year. Meals can be picked up at our Multi Purpose Room between 11:00a and 11:30a. Meals may be picked up by a guardian if the student(s) is in a virtual class. This service will remain in effect whether we are in distance learning or on-campus learning. This applies to older or younger siblings that are under 18 years; just create a profile (in Boonli) for the sibling and order.

Please order your meals at our Boonli website (mmca.boonli.com). If you need to create an account, our school password in "MMCA1." Orders are due weekly on Thursday nights at 11:59pm.

All current accounts have been changed to free status. If you add any profiles (for siblings, for instance) please email us at hotlunch@mmcharter.org to let us know that the account needs to be updated to free status.

For this to work, we also need all of our families to fill out the free/reduced lunch application on our website, available via this link here: https://c42096c6-2e4d-493d-bdff-126f872232dd.filesusr.com/ugd/4b8266_991b84cfd9474bd5aced4f09bb25a53c.pdf. Thanks to the federal program, it doesn’t matter whether or not you qualify for free lunch, everyone in your household 18 years of age or younger will be eligible for a free lunch through December. Please fill this application out and either email it to hotlunch@mmcharter.org or drop it off at our front office.

Note:

We have had much more demand for lunches since the meals are now free and families don’t have to pick up meals daily. We need to change pick up to twice per week because we don’t have room in our refrigerator to store all the lunches. Pick up will be as follows for the next couple of weeks:

Wednesday 9/16 for meals to be consumed on 9/16-9/18
Monday, 9/21 for meals to be consumed on 9/21-9/23
Thursday, 9/24 for meals to be consumed on 9/24-9/25

After that the regular schedule will be Mondays pick up for Mon-Wed and Thursdays pick up for Thurs-Fri; time will remain 11:00-11:30.

Preschool Available Spots

Spread the word: Given all of the uncertainty in the region caused by COVID, we still have spots available in our preschool this year. Preschool applications are accepted on a “first come, first served” basis.

Round 3 Student Uniform Orders - Online!

The first two rounds of uniform orders have been delivered. We’re starting our third round, with an order deadline of 9.11.20 (orders typically take about 2 weeks to process). Given COVID, we’ve added a new item to our student store - a school spiritwear cloth mask (pictured below).

Part time work - lunch staff and ASC

Given the increased number of lunch/recess groups we’re going to have as a part of our COVID mitigation plan, we’re going to be looking for more staff to work during our lunch periods and potentially during After School Care. If interested, please contact Mr. Baldonade at rbaldonade@mmcharter.org.