Scotts Valley High School

Dear SVUSD community,

As most of you are aware, we have implemented voluntary on-site PCR testing for students and staff at all of our sites this past week. We knew there would be some initial challenges, but overall it has run reasonably well. We will continue testing next week, and each of your sites should be communicating with you about those specific testing windows.

Additionally, all districts are working on setting up dashboard data based on the information we are receiving through this new testing process since we have not been able to obtain that information from county public health.

For those who attended the Town Hall webinar sponsored by the Santa Cruz County Office of Education last night regarding COVID-19 and schools, I’m hoping you were able to get some of your questions answered. The session was recorded. 

Additionally, more student vaccination clinics are happening this Sunday:  Registration and Locations for September 12th Clinics

While we acknowledge there are a lot of strong and varying opinions regarding voluntary on-site COVID testing, please know our intention is to do our best to keep kids in school, provide the safest environment possible for students and staff, and prevent school exposures to the best of our ability.

Here is today’s letter from the County Superintendents:  

September 10 Letter - English

September 10 Letter - Spanish

Thank you for your participation and partnership in this process.

Sincerely,

Tanya Krause

Dear SVUSD Community,

Our educational community has suffered a very sad loss.  

The Santa Cruz County Superintendents gathered together in unity to send this communication in support, and in response, to this tragic event.  We are collectively assisting Aptos High School and want to remind everyone how important it is to check in with kids about these serious kinds of events.  

Our collective letter is attached.

Most sincerely,

Tanya Krause
Superintendent

Hello Scotts Valley Community,

We’re a little over two weeks into this new school year and while we are excited to see students back on campus, our site teams have spent a significant amount of time focusing on being trained to administer site-based COVID testing, being trained on the multiple required communications and data entry for CDPH, and unfortunately, not able to spend as much time focusing on how we normally kick off the school year.

In the past two weeks, there have been many changes starting on the first day of school with the Public Health Order, and CDPH continuing to make alterations and changes to processes and procedures with requirements for schools. I have asked the site administrators to be in more direct communication with their school communities as situations differ from site to site.

Please know that it is our intent to be communicative, but we have been focusing on addressing the new regulations, doing our very best to keep students and staff safe, and adhering to the new requirements.  Please read the letter from the County Superintendents.

We are pleased to see students participating in school, athletics, drama, and outdoor activities.

All school sites will be holding their back-to-school nights in the near future and you will be hearing more from them about the specific details.

The staff has been working hard to learn and transition to the new student information system and we continue to work out the kinks. This year our district is focusing on common assessments to support teaching and intervention. Teachers across the district are currently working to assess students and determine how to best support them in content areas. Middle and High School teachers are using various assessment tools to monitor student progress on standards. Elementary teachers are assessing students’ reading, writing, and math, to determine how best to shore up areas of need and support students’ academic growth. Additionally, our elementary teachers recently participated in a refresher on literacy assessments.

Thank you for your ongoing support, flexibility, and patience as we continue to experience new ways of doing things.

Sincerely,

Tanya Krause, Superintendent