Hello AAPS Students and Staff, Parents and Community,

We share a pre-spring break update today on the ninth day of the COVID-19 school closure. Please review information on: 

• AAPS Food Service Distribution
• Post-Spring Break Learning opportunities in the AAPS
• Information About School Closure
  
  

AAPS Food Service

Food distribution continues tomorrow, Friday, March 27th at sixteen locations across our community. 

AAPS Food Service will continue during Spring Break and will take place on Tuesday and Thursday next week. See the full list of locations and times.

If you have food allergy needs or cannot make it to a pick-up location please call the food hotline at 734-994-2265. Arrangements will be made.

More Significant Learning Opportunities in the AAPS Following Spring Break

Over this past week, teachers have been reaching out to connect with students, sharing enrichment, review and refresh learning opportunities to ensure continued student engagement in learning across the Ann Arbor Public Schools. 

In addition, approximately 1,500 teachers, staff and leaders have participated in 61 remote professional development sessions to sharpen their skills in facilitating distance learning. We have also worked to check out 1,800 learning devices to students and families so that our students have access to online learning.

Over these previous eight days, our AAPS teachers and teams have been working hard on preparations to set up their online classrooms and to acclimate to a distance learning model. I am proud of the efforts of our teachers and staff, and we are excited to provide more significant online learning opportunities and move forward with subject area content shortly after spring break.

We recognize that our students and families have widely varying needs, abilities and time-constraints, particularly during this crisis, and a ‘one size fits all’ approach to distance learning in the AAPS will not be the best path. As a result, our teachers and school teams will be working, as they do every day, with students and parents to ensure a balanced approach to distance learning while also attending to other needed supports such as particular learning, social emotional, and mental health needs.

In addition to this foundation of regular engagement and learning with the classroom teacher, as we look ahead a little farther over the coming months, we are also exploring a menu of optional learning opportunities and enhancements from which our students and families may choose. We will share more about these additional learning opportunities following spring break.

More Information About School Closure

As a reminder, Governor Whitmer has closed schools by Executive Order through April 13th. We remain in close contact with the Governor’s office through our channels and understand that she, alongside a team of experts, is monitoring the COVID-19 data closely, and she has promised to share more detailed school closure information just as soon as possible. We will be in touch right away when we receive any additional clarification on the timeline.

We never anticipated our spring break would look like this, yet we wish all our students and staff, parents and community a healthy and safe week; may you find some respite from this challenging time we are facing.

I appreciate your partnership and support of our 18,500 children and of the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Sincerely,

Jeanice K. Swift
Superintendent of Schools