Dear Parents,
First, let me thank you for your support and understanding as we, as a nation and community, responded to the unexpected invasion of COVID-19 in March. We are very proud of the way our students, parents, employees, and community leaders handled the demands we were faced with to protect everyone as we continued to educate our students during the most unusual of circumstances. As you know, there continues to be concerns and questions related to how schools plan to reopen in December 2020 after clear instructions from the Government. While we are in the business of educating, our priority is the safety of our students and our employees. Be assured, we have been working diligently on our School of Law 2020- 2021 Smart Restart Plans. We desire to return to school as normal (traditional) with enhanced safety and cleaning procedures. However, we must be proactive and be prepared during these ever-changing times to continue educating our students if and when circumstances change, as predicted, throughout the year related to the health and safety of our students and employees.
We are gathering input from parents, employees, community stakeholders, administrators, state leaders, the Department of Education, and medical professionals via surveys, committees, and a task force. Administrators and department leaders have been planning for increased safety procedures that can be taken at every location. We are working on three scenarios:
1. Enhanced Traditional Plan- We would continue school as normal with enhanced safety precautions in place such as increased hand sanitiser availability, increased frequency of cleaning of high touch areas, limited visitation to campuses, etc., to possibly prevent the transition to a hybrid or full distance learning option. (Again, this is our plan for January 2020 pending more restrictive guidance from the Government.)
2. Social Distancing/Hybrid Plan- Hybrid would be a combination of distance and face-to-face instruction with increased safety and disinfecting measures as listed above, which could be done in a variety of configurations. This would only be enacted by us to maintain a social distance (six feet), to limit the number of people in groups, etc.
I encourage our parents to frequently visit our webpage and follow our social media for up to date and accurate information. Many false rumours are being disseminated which leads to unnecessary confusion. Everyone must understand there is no way for us to please all as we make these decisions. Our priority is to keep everyone safe while not making life more difficult for our parents. Each family situation is uniquely different. We fully understand your varied concerns about health and safety, distance learning, the importance of face-to-face instruction, parents needing to work, the economy, and all of the other unexpected consequences of not being in school or being in school in a traditional method. If for some reason, we can’t be in a traditional school situation; our goal is to find the best way to have our students safely in our buildings as frequently as possible to ensure the health and well-being of all.
As we move forward, we also want to have the opinion of the parents and we would want to know whether parents are willing to send their wards to college if the lockdown opens. Parent’s consent in the same regards is very important.
We have shared a consent letter on the LMS, the link of the same is shared here as well and the notice of the same is on the website we would request the parents to please take a printout of the consent form (page no 3), fill this up, take a photo and upload to google form (https://forms.gle/ChtoDHXv9kSJbQNu8), send it back to us it will be very helpful for us in taking decisions as per your opinion as well.
As we continue we will keep you updated. Thank you for your continued support and positivity as we strive to do what is best for ALL of our students and employees during these challenging times.
Serving you,
Administration
School of Law
D Y Patil University (Deemed to be)