FMCSD offers enhancements to volunteer learning program

The following is a letter from Superintendent Dr. Erin Slater emailed to parents and published on the Fort Madison Community School District's website Friday. It's printed in it's entirety.

Dear FMCSD Families,

As you are probably aware, on April 2, Gov. Reynolds extended the period of closure for all schools in Iowa through April 30. At that time school districts were presented with several options for student learning including:

• providing no learning or
• providing required learning or
• providing voluntary learning

FMCSD will continue providing voluntary learning for students but will also be adding opportunities for students to meet with teachers virtually twice each week as well as offering regularly scheduled office hours for students or parents to reach out to teachers for immediate contact with questions or concerns they may have.

Virtual class meetings may include activities and interactions with teachers through reading aloud, demonstrations, discussions and more. Also, at each meeting, teachers will be sharing resources with students they can access anytime to continue their learning throughout the week.

Participation in the virtual meetings is voluntary and parents do have the option of opting out by following these steps:

• log into your Parent Portal account
• select  the Permissions icon on the left side
• select‘Opt Out’ on the related permission

Please note that by default all students are opted in. 

We know that this continues to be a challenging time for families. Please know we are here to support you and your student. You will be receiving information from your child’s building/teacher next week regarding upgraded voluntary learning opportunities.

The resources that teachers originally created will remain on our website, https://www.fmcsd.org/ & https://www.fmcsd.org/covid-19, for your children to access at any time.  

I am proud of the FMCSD and the community.  We are all in this together and we will continue to help and support you during this period of shut down.

Please do not hesitate to reach out. We miss our students and hope that our families are staying healthy. I wish you and your family a Happy Easter weekend.

Sincerely,

Dr. Erin M. Slater, Superintendent