Good afternoon, Yellow Jackets! I am so proud of our students, parents, teachers, and staff and the effort put forth by all of our stakeholders to make the start of this year another success. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we start another unique school year. While there are a number of factors that are out of our control locally, we all understand the need for flexibility. If you have any problems or concerns with the start of school, please do not hesitate to reach out to your teacher. We appreciate everyone's patience during morning drop off and afternoon car pickup. For student safety and to meet the requirements of a closed campus, we ask all parents to remain in their vehicles for both morning car drop off and afternoon car pick up. While we are using a new system for dismissal, our delays are mostly due to the large number of students participating in car dismissal. Last year, we were loading around 150-200 cars every afternoon. We are averaging well over 300 over the first three days. We hope this process speeds up as students become more comfortable with procedures and parents opt into other dismissal methods. While students went directly to their classrooms upon arriving to campus this week; starting Monday, students will report to their designated grade level locations. Pre-K and Kindergarten students will still report to their classrooms, 1st-3rd grade students will have the opportunity to go to the Media Center or participate in our morning run/walk club, and 4th and 5th grade students will report to the playground. We will continue to have additional staff available to direct students to their appropriate locations. For these reasons, it is important that students arrive before 8:25. We will close our parent drop-off gate at that time. Any families that arrive after 8:25 must use our front bus loop entrance. Staff members will be outside to assist students with check-in. As a reminder, if your child has a fever or feels ill, please have them remain at home until symptoms subside. If the need arises for your student, or anyone in your immediate household, to receive a COVID test, please notify the school immediately. We will provide this information to the Department of Health, who will contact the appropriate individuals with recommended procedures. Starting Monday, Any students who come to the clinic with the symptoms below will be required to go home, based on guidance from Leon County Schools and the Health Department. Students may return the next day as long as the symptoms have subsided with the exception of fever, which requires a 48 hour fever free without medication return to school release. The district hopes that this is temporary guidance and can be relaxed in upcoming weeks. * Fever or chills * Cough * Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing * Fatigue * Muscle or body aches * Headache * New loss of taste or smell * Sore throat * Congestion or runny nose * Nausea or vomiting * Diarrhea Compass Health Systems will be offering free PCR Covid Testing for Leon County Schools staff and students at nine different locations around Tallahassee. Compass Health will be able to provide via email the results to the person tested within 24 hours, with hopes of 2 to 4 hours once they are fully operational. The lab should be functional sometime next week. These nine testing sites will be open from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm Monday - Friday and more specifics will be available next week. We hope everyone enjoys the weekend! ________________________________ *SUNSHINE LAW AND PUBLIC RECORDS CAUTION: Florida has a very broad Public Records Law. Virtually all written communications to or from School Board of Leon County, Florida Personnel are public records available to the public and media upon request. E-mail sent or received on the LCSB system will be considered public and will only be withheld from disclosure if deemed confidential pursuant to State Law. Individual student records are deemed confidential.