The Year Ahead

Dear Veritas Families,

 

Greetings from Veritas! I hope your family is enjoying the remaining weeks of the summer, having good times with family, relaxing with the different pace of schedule, and staying healthy and safe. Our campus is buzzing with activity, as we continue working toward the priority of reopening safely on the first day of our 2020-21 academic year.

We welcome our many new families and welcome back our returning families! Despite being in an unprecedented time, we are enthusiastic about this year. We look forward to seeing our students on campus and online, engaging them academically and watching them develop spiritually and socially. This year is no different than others in one respect – our faculty and staff are deeply committed to laying a foundation of faith and academics, pressing onward through the current challenge before us. We are grateful for your strong support of Veritas. While this year will have its challenges, as a Christian community of learners, we will meet what is ahead of us with prayer, resolve, and a deep sense of trust in each other; and as always, our decisions will be guided by our mission and values.

 

The Year Ahead: 2020-21 is unique this year. It has been shifted online alongside our Return to Campus Playbook.  We have moved our communications online to keep the information up-to-date. You will receive several waves of communication from our administration and faculty between now and the first day of school. Additionally, we plan to provide several short videos on the return to campus and distance learning options, as well as behind the scenes tour around campus to see our classrooms and new configurations.

 

We also welcome several new faculty members to campus this year, each of whom is excited to share their expertise in our students’ development. We know that each individual will become integral to the success of our students. I invite you to take the time to read through this webpage to familiarize yourself with the upcoming year as well as our new faculty and staff.  They look forward to welcoming your children on campus and online this year!

As you saw reflected in our Return to Campus Playbook, we have given careful attention to clinical research-based safety practices combined with resourceful teaching and learning strategies. To support our priority of safely being on campus and providing families with the utmost flexibility, Veritas has made substantial investment in facility modifications, technology, and personal protective equipment. We worked together and with outside experts to create a unique way for Veritas to use our resources and our campus to open school safely. Our Family Pledge sets the stage for our safety protocols and expresses the part that each member of our community plays in maintaining those protocols. Please pay special attention to the Family Pledge detailed on our website.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, our success in creating a safe environment for our whole school will depend on our commitment to those values that have always undergirded our community: selflessness, caring about our neighbor, and good leadership by everyone who count themselves as a part of the Veritas family: students and their families, faculty, staff and their families. We will move onward together as never before to fulfill the mission of Veritas in this moment of uncertainty and disruption.

 

To create as strong a beginning as possible, we have made some schedule adjustments to our opening days (August 19-21) in each grade. Our students, faculty, and staff need opportunities to grow confident in new expectations and patterns of activity on campus and online. We have decided to use the first three days of school to practice the new safety procedures and patterns of activity with smaller numbers of students on campus. One third of the students will be on campus each day so we can observe and modify the procedures as needed to be most efficient and effective. See the schedule below of which grades will be on campus each day.  Your child's teacher will send a daily schedule with information regarding the Distance Learning Option.  All classes will return to campus concurrently on August 24th.

 

Finally, in the midst of our planning, we know we all need to remain flexible and supportive. The coming weeks and months may present moments where we need to pivot to a contingency plan, whether as an entire school, a class, a small group, or an individual family. In those inevitable circumstances, we will press ahead, making the best decisions we can for our community and seeking first to support our students with safety as our priority. In any circumstance, we are confident that we will move onward with our mission laying a Foundation for Life.

Best wishes and I look forward to the new academic year!

 

Kind Regards,