Monthly Archives: September 2020

Please find attached our annual letter regarding VTRA (Violence Threat Risk Assessment) and how it is used within TLDSB schools to maintain the safety of our school’s members.  The purpose of the VTRA letter is let our school community know about the procedure and why it might be used.

Please remember to post DGH’s safe arrival number by your phone so you can call and leave a message should your child(ren) be absent.  When a student is late or absent and the school has not been informed, office staff go to great lengths to determine if the student is safe.  A short message on the Safe Arrival Line helps eliminate this issue. It also saves Mrs. Taylor and Ms. Starr a great deal of time in the morning (as they will call all contact numbers multiple times until they confirm that the student is safe).

The Safe Arrival Line is:

705-786-1915

(this is the main line for the school – the voice box will be on before 8:15 a.m. and after 4:15 p.m.)

Mrs. Taylor and Ms. Starr will be sending home Student Information Forms (SIF) tomorrow morning (Friday).  We ask that our families:

– carefully go over the information on this form (correcting and updating as required)

– please pay particular attention to parents/guardians contact numbers (cell phone and home phone numbers) AND emergency contact numbers

– return this form to the school as soon as possible (your child will give it to their homeroom teacher, who will then bring it to the office)

It is absolutely critical (especially this year) that we have accurate contact numbers on file.  We use the SIF to update our main school database and we can keep these forms on file at the school.  

DGH Bell Times For 2020-2021 School Year

Parents, guardians and students, class times, nutritional and recess times at DGH are noted below. Please note that bell times have changed from previous years. The start and end of the day has not changed (just the times for periods, nutrition breaks and recesses).

Based on what I have seen on the days at which students have been at school, students have largely been doing a great job with wearing masks.  The DGH staff truly appreciate all the effort that parents and guardians have put into preparing their kids to wear masks at school (especially our younger students).  While I know much of this information has been communicated previously, I want to continue reinforcing certain messaging.  So much of school (in a regular year) is about routines); in a year such as this, it is even more so the case.  We know that once students fall into the routine of doing certain things, this routine will be followed for as long as required.

Students are to wear masks:

– while on the bus

– anytime they are in the school, unless they are eating or taking a drink

– outside on the yard/tarmac if they are less than 6 feet apart from another student

As well, please continue to reinforce with your child(ren) the importance of keeping their hands to themselves.  Again, overall our students have been very good about this, but these are kids after all and they are going to forget at times.  So, the more reminders and discussions about this the better! 

As noted above, I (on behalf of the DGH staff) thank our community for being so pro-active on encouraging their kids to follow these routines.  I would also thank our students who are largely doing an outstanding job too!  

As I did last week, I will continue to send out occasional emails regarding key information from the TLDSB’s Return To School plan.  The plan should have been sent to you via a central TLDSB email, but I am including a link to the website where the most up to date Return To School plan should be located.  The link is below:

https://www.tldsb.ca/returntoschool/

(if the link doesn’t work when you click on it, just copy the link into your browser and it should take you there).

One key from the document is the importance of completing a health assessment on your child(ren) prior to sending them to school each day (whether they are taking the bus, they walk, or you are dropping them off at school).  I cannot stress enough the importance of completing this health assessment prior to school each day.  If your child is showing any Covid-19 like symptoms they are not allowed to be school.  The symptoms and the health assessment are located on page 16 of the Return to School plan.  The parent/guardian will be called immediately of any student who shows any Covid-19 like symptoms.  A student showing symptoms will be immediately removed to a designated health room until someone is able to pick the student up.  Please refer to page 12 of the Return To School plan for the TLDSB’s specific messaging around this.   

We ask all of our families to have a back up plan in place for an adult to pick their child(ren) up in this situation.  Many families have parents and guardians who work a considerable distance from the school or who have jobs that are difficult to leave on short notice.  If this is the case, please have back up plans (multiple people, likely) for other adults who would be able to pick up a student who needs to go home.  A student showing symptoms will not be allowed to ride the bus. 

Please know that our goal is to keep our students and staff as safe as possible working within our Return To School plan and our local health unit’s direction.

Please find attached the annual reminder letter regarding our school being a Peanut and Tree Nut Safe School. Our school has multiple students with severe, life-threatening allergies to these products. As always, we appreciate the support of our families in doing their best to ensure that products containing peanuts and tree nuts do not come into school.

Attached to this email is a letter containing information regarding the Parent Council Nomination Form for the 2020-2021 school year.  If you are interested in joining our Parent Council (including our Parent Council Executive), simply complete the nomination form.

Key Information

– nomination forms are due by Friday, October 2 at 3:30 pm

– while you can complete a paper nomination form and return to the school; we would prefer, if at all possible, that the nomination form be completed online

– the link to the online nomination form is contained in the attached letter and is also located here

– the Parent Council election takes place on Wednesday, October 7

With 2 days down in our Return To School plan, one thing I can definitely say (on behalf of the DGH staff) is that it is WONDERFUL to have students back in our school! While we knew that we missed our students over the past 6 months, this was truly hammered home when we saw our first students stepping off the bus on Tuesday. The smiles on their faces were matched only by the smiles on our faces.

Walking into a classroom and finally see students sitting at their desks was certainly a great sight to see!

While there will be lots posted to our website and Facebook page in the next days and weeks, I wanted to start off these posts with this short message of positivity and thanks. Whether we have your child for in person learning at school or if your child is learning online at home – thanks for following along with the messaging that has been taking place AND thanks for the many conversations we have had between school and home. Also, thank you for supporting us in all of our plans moving forward. Thanks go out to the DGH custodial team who have worked incredibly hard over the summer and especially in the last few weeks before school started to get all the necessary logistical pieces in place. This was no small accomplishment. Thanks go out to the DGH staff who have worked through so many logistical and educational pieces in the past couple of weeks in preparation for finally having students back. Many hours have been spent in rethinking what education looks like in an ongoing pandemic world.

2 more days this week brings 2 new groups of students for us to see and work with! Now – if we could do something about the rain and grey weather….