Parents and Guardians: Thank you for your understanding of our need to meet with essential staff members as we completed plans to transition to Distance Learning and Nutritional service. Please note that while our schools are closed, our District office, teachers and staff are working. Although students are not physically in our classrooms, our employees’ commitment to meeting your students’ learning and nutritional needs will continue.
Beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, March 17, our school buses will be transporting meals to students along our regular bus routes. These no-cost, grab-and-go meals are available to any student desiring one. Each grab-and-go bag will contain nutrition for breakfast as well as lunch. Buses transporting food for students will begin their routes at 11 a.m., and most will have made their deliveries by 12:30 p.m.
The routes are available on our website under the Department of Transportation and linked below for your convenience.
https://www.acpsd.net/Domain/78
Please be reminded about the laws in stopping for school buses. When a school bus is stopped on a two-lane road with its red lights flashing and its stop arm extended, you must stop your vehicle 20 feet from the bus. Oncoming traffic and motorists approaching the bus from behind may not move until the stop arm is retracted and the red lights are no longer flashing. There are going to be buses making deliveries, so please use caution and watch out for students as they make their way to bus stop locations for these meal deliveries.
If a student has not received a meal and the bus delivery time is delayed by more than 30 minutes at the published meal delivery time, please contact the District Transportation Office at (803) 593-7201 and a bus will be radioed to deliver a meal to your stop.
Food for students is also available by picking up a grab-and-go bag at any of our school campuses between the hours of 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.
Please note that student meals will be available throughout this school closure on weekdays for students beginning tomorrow. Student meals will not be distributed or available for grab-and-go pickup at school campuses on the already published day off of Monday, March 23.
In the absence of specific distance learning assignments for your students, which will be available beginning Thursday, please encourage your child to practice sustained reading. Also, there are Online Student Learning Opportunities available under the Instructional Services Department on our District website, www.acpsd.net.
Paper and pencil Distance Learning Packets are being assembled and will be available for pick up at school locations on Thursday, March 19, from noon until 7:00 p.m., and Friday, March 20, from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. School principals will communicate additional details with students’ parents/guardians along with a schedule for pickup to ensure that they are distributed in a way that allows for appropriate social distancing in our continued efforts to protect the health of our students, staff members and community.
In order to accommodate the varied communications preferences of our students and families, the paper and pencil printed Distance Learning Packets will include all instructional materials students are required to complete for remote learning throughout this closure. The State Department will require that students complete 200 minutes of instructional activities per day. Our Distance Learning Plans received approval this afternoon from the State Department of Education and, following those, we expect to continue with spring break and our established school calendar as planned.
Teacher conferencing, virtual classrooms and online enrichment activities will be designed to enhance the educational experience. In order to assist our teachers with planning to connect with students during this closure, parents/guardians are asked to answer a few questions about home computer and internet access. Schools/Teachers may also be requesting the same through other communications. Please take a moment to complete this request for each of your Aiken County Public School students.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ACPSDHomeInternetAccess
We appreciate your flexibility and understanding and are certainly keeping all impacted by these changes in our thoughts.