Greetings Families and all in the Holley School Community,

We made it through our first full week of the 2020-21 school year! It’s hard to believe, but this week marks six months since our students and staff were last at school in-person together. So much has happened, and we’ve come so far, it’s incredible. Although there have been many challenges and obstacles to overcome, I’m so very proud of the entire Holley CSD to get to this point. Go Hawks!

First of all, we here at Holley CSD owe a huge thank you to the parents, grandparents, guardians and caregivers of our students. Your patience and understanding over the past six months, as we’ve navigated through all the NYS mandates, restrictions, conditions and changes, has been greatly appreciated. As we’ve “re-opened” school, your commitment and continued patience has helped us to not only be more prepared, but also to feel supported. This means the world to us, thank you.

We understand that we’re all learning as we go and things aren’t perfect, but we’ll continue to improve and keep our students’ academic, social and emotional needs at the forefront of all we do. For our remote learners (hybrid or fully remote), our goal is to be better instructionally and with communication than we were this past spring. For our in-person learners, we are so excited to have them back, and we will continue to keep safety as a priority. So far, our students who have returned in-person have done a remarkable job with all our new conditions, including remaining physically distant and keeping masks on when they can’t be. Even our youngest learners have really impressed us with how well they’re doing with the requirements to be in school. Things don’t exactly appear as we’d like them to right now, but we’re thankful to have some in-person learning occurring. If things continue to remain safe and our regional infection rates stay low, hopefully, we can return more students to in-person learning on a daily basis.

Over the summer, not knowing what our return to school plans would exactly be, we decided to publish our school calendar as it would look if all events and activities were able to occur in a traditional year. However, we also knew as the year progressed, we might have to make changes and adjustments, based on the conditions at the time. Given that, we have our first calendar adjustment of the year to make. On our calendar, you may have seen that on Friday, Sept. 25, we had a planned half-day for students.This half-day would traditionally be used for staff to work together and have professional development. Given that we want to take advantage of as much in-person time as possible for students, we are going to now have a full day of school on Friday, Sept. 25. Therefore, our White Hawks will have as much in-person time next week as our other cohort of students, the Red Hawks. As the year progresses, we will review each aspect of our calendar closely to maximize student learning and provide needed time for teachers and staff to work together to prepare for their new conditions of teaching and learning. Thank you for understanding and making those changes as they occur.

Once again, thank you so much for all your support of the district and even more so, of your student(s). The partnership between home and school continues to be an essential element of our success. As always, please reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns, and please continue to review our district website as we post resources and important information for families there often.

Have an enjoyable weekend and a great school year Holley families! Stay Holley Strong!

Brian Bartalo

Superintendent of Schools