Office of the Superintendent
TO: All District Staff
FROM: Glenn Maleyko, Ph.D, Superintendent
RE: Update During the Current COVID 19 Crisis
DATE: May 3, 2020
Hello Everyone
I hope that you are doing well and that you enjoyed the beautiful weather over the weekend. We all deserve a positive and the weather helped this weekend. Here are a few updates.
One Minute Message: Several Weeks ago I started to implement “One Minute Message” videos that are created for Instagram but they also feed into my twitter and facebook accounts. Here are a couple of examples. Food Distribution one minute message click Here. Grading Click Here.
Feel free to follow me on Instagram or other forms of social media.
Click Here to view all of my social media outlets that you can follow.
Click Here to view District official social media and communication channels.
Virtual Visits with Glenn and David. We will continue to tape virtual visits and we publish two per week. We are now up to 16 virtual visits. Click Here for the latest episode. Feel free to follow the Dearborn Schools Youtube Channel. Click Here.
Quick Rings: We also started a new communication method with messages from David Mustonen and school district staff who provide information to students, families and the community regarding important district services or important school related issues. Click here.
Continuity of Learning Plan On-line Learning: We continue to implement our plan and I want to thank our entire staff with a special thank you to our building administrators and especially our outstanding teachers for the great work that you are doing as you reach out to our students.
Virtual Meetings, Google Hangouts, and Legal Action against perpetrators: As most of you are aware, we had a few students who gave out passcodes to their google accounts and created disruption to learning. This sort of behavior is occurring in many districts across the county, state and nation as districts were forced to move to online learning as a response to the COVID 19 Crisis. As a result, we have created a modified plan for the rest of the school year which was sent out last week. We are also looking at the development of a long term plan for the 2020-21 school year. Mr. Troy Patterson will lead that process.
In addition, Mr. Abe Mashhour and Mr. John Leacher have been in contact with the Dearborn Police following my conversation with Chief Haddad. We plan to pursue our investigation and will exercise options according to our student code of conduct and the law to protect our students and staff moving forward when we are using online tools. This may involve issuing tickets and/or other more serious criminal charges against the perpetrators in coordination with the Dearborn Police. We are very grateful for the relationship that we have with Chief Haddad and the outstanding Dearborn Police Department.
School Restart/Reopening Committee. We believe that school will look much different in the fall. I am involved in discussions at the County and State level with my Superintendent Associations. I have appointed a committee that will be co-chaired by Maysam Alie-Bazzi, David Higgins, and Jane Mazza to start the planning for a return to school in the fall. This committee is very important and will provide us with important direction while monitoring recommendations from the national and state level.
Budget. We are concerned about the budget moving forward given the current crisis. We have a Finance Committee meeting on Monday as we will continue to dialogue and develop a plan of action to deal with budget shortfalls that will likely occur at the state level.
High School Graduation Ceremonies.
We are still having discussions on this issue with many students, principals, board members and administration. We made a decision to postpone the ceremonies as we look at different options moving forward. More information will be provided in the near future as we monitor conditions related to the COVID 19 response in Michigan.
Closing Statement for this memo: During these unprecedented times, I encourage you to do what is necessary to protect your loved ones. On behalf of the Board of Education and the Central Office Cabinet, I want to express my appreciation for the great work by our entire staff as we support each other to get through the current crisis. Our thoughts and prayers go out to anyone who has suffered the loss of a family member or a friend as a result of the COVID 19 virus. We really appreciate the outstanding work that our front line professionals are doing to ensure that we get through the current crisis.
Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.—Joseph Campbell, author