Community Letter

Dear East Prairie Community,

Our school district has always found success by making decisions in the best interest of our students, families, staff, and community.  While that goal remains firm and unwavering today, doing so has rarely been so difficult. 

Like always, we plan to work together to identify the best possible outcomes for our students given the enormous challenges of a global pandemic and uncertain future.  This evening, at our Board of Education meeting, the difficult decision was made to pause our reopening option and begin the year remotely for all of our students.  This decision was made with incredible care and concern for all of our families and grounded in our primary goal of ensuring the health, safety, and wellbeing of our entire community to the fullest extent possible.  While we believe our collaboratively developed plans put us in the very best position for reopening in-person learning, the continuously evolving conditions around us lead us to believe this is not in the best interest of our community at this time.  In the document below you will find further information outlining the plan to begin the year.

We continue to share the belief that our students learn best in our school, in-person, and with one another and our wonderful staff.  We also know with improvements based on the feedback we received, there are enhanced ways we can deliver learning remotely to help our students continue to grow academically, socially, and emotionally until it is safe to do so together again in person. We will work tirelessly to provide the very best possible remote learning model for our students and families, and will continuously monitor the conditions that will allow us to bring our East Prairie family back through our schoolhouse doors.

We know this decision is hard and we share everyone’s frustrations with the challenges it presents. Students belong in school as soon as it is safe to do so.  We look forward to partnering with you throughout this year like we always do. Together. Thank you for your support, patience, grace, and understanding.

Sincerely,

Atanu Das Erick Tuman Mark Johnson Duke Gavrilovic
Board President Board Vice-President Board Secretary Board Member

Frank Santoro Michael Hornick Amanda Martinsen
Board Member Board Member Board Member

Paul Goldberg Hal Schmeisser
Superintendent Principal

Sandy DeBettencourt Coleen Sharkey
Teachers Union President Teachers Union Vice President