Over the last few months, we have been busy preparing for the return to our fabulous school building. The past few days and weeks, in particular, have seen the school become a hive of activity. We also launched the Return to School area on our website, which has lots of vital information for our community.

Here is a snapshot into what has been happening over the last few days as we prepare to welcome our pupils back:
- Lots of deliveries, including boxes for PPE equipment, new classroom resources, fencing to separate our yard areas and even new tarmac on some of our outdoor paths.
- Staff have been learning new classroom procedures, including how to get to and from yard, creating space to store pupil resources, removing any clutter from classrooms and preparing lessons for the first day back.
- Resources which we used to share across the school have been split up into classrooms instead.
- Our footpaths have been spray-painted to help our community to remember to physically distance when they are on the school campus. 

It has certainly been a very busy few days on campus, along with lots of meetings, timetabling and communicating with families. We look forward to welcoming our pupils back over the next few days!

We have come to the end of our Citywest ETNS Summer Camp... and what a wonderful two weeks we have had! We have been able to welcome children to 6 different classes, with a total of 21 staff members working throughout the fortnight. 

The children have achieved so much and it has been very special to have pupils back in the school building for the first time since March. Each day has been filled with lots of fun and play, but they have also been practising some of our new school routines - sanitising, physical distancing and moving safely through the school. We just know they will be fantastic Safety Champions next week when we welcome back the rest of our pupils.

We are very proud of our Early Intervention class also - they have just started school for the first time and have had a super two weeks!

Take a look at some of the activities from our classes this week: making ice-cream, artwork, stop motion videos, bug hunting, outdoor learning and lots more! 

Our Bug Hotel has been an amazing collaborative project during our Summer Camp - we can't wait for the rest of the school to see it... and we can't wait to see lots of bugs moving in! 

At a meeting of the Board of Management last night, our school's COVID Response Plan (below) was ratified. We have also put together a handy glance-sheet for parents, summarising some of the main points covered in the COVID Response Plan.

The Board has also issued a letter to parents in respect of the return to school this year.

We are so proud of our Summer Camp Junior Class who made puppets and puppet theatres this week and used them to perform. They even recorded their performance so we could all enjoy it! Massive well done to you all!

We have had a wonderful week here in the school.
It is so great to see and hear children in this building again. Everyone has a wonderful attitude and is so positive and helpful. Here are some photos of what we've gotten up to. We have created a bug hotel for our school, created stop motion videos, made puppets, rice krispie buns and snot slime! And so much more!

Thank you so much for your wonderful engagement with this survey.
Results are as follows:

• Number of responses 249
• Response rate (number of responses as a percentage of eligible families) 91%

Question 1 - Do you think that staggering the year start is a good idea?

• 86% Yes
• 14% No 

Question 2 - How manageable would this plan be for your family?

• 54% This would pose no difficulty for us. 
• 32% This would pose a difficulty but we can manage it and agree it would be worth it.
• 9% This would pose a difficulty. We could manage it but we don't think it's worth it.
• 5% This would not be possible or would cause huge stress for us.

It seems very clear that our community is broadly in favour of this plan and so we will proceed with it. We aim to let you know on Monday 24th August which day your child is asked to come.

It is now two weeks until school restarts. Two weeks is the crucial incubation time for Covid-19 and so it is time for us all to stop and think and dial back our interactions so as to care for each other and, in particular, for those most vulnerable in our community.

You will be asked to answer the following questions about your child in the week before school restarts. These 14 days bring us back to today.

1. Does your child have symptoms of cough, fever, high temperature, sore throat, runny nose, breathlessness or flu like symptoms now or in the past 14 days?
2. Has your child been diagnosed with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 infection in the last 14 days?
3. Has your child been advised by the HSE that they are a close contact of a person who is a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19 in the past 14 days?
4. Has your child been advised by a doctor to self-isolate at this time?
5. Has your child been advised by a doctor to cocoon at this time?
6. Have you been advised by your doctor that your child is in the very high risk group? If yes, please liaise with your doctor and Principal re return to school.
7. ​I confirm, to the best of my knowledge that my child has no symptoms of COVID-19, they are not self-isolating or awaiting results of a COVID-19 test.

The Board of Management of Citywest ETNS met on 6th August 2020.
At that meeting, the Board ratified the Response Plan for Summer Provision and discussed the documents that have been published by the Department of Education over the last month in relation to reopening the full school. The Board of Management will meet again on 17th August with a view to ratifying a Response Plan for reopening the full school.

The Board is encouraged by the work done by school staff, in conjunction with the Chairperson of the Parents Association, to date. The Board is aware that the various reopening planning groups are meeting over the coming 7 weekdays - Friday 7th to Monday 17th - once Summer Provision has finished for the day. The Board commends our staff and leadership team for their commitment and looks forward to publishing a thorough plan following the next meeting of the Board.

The Board is aware of anxiety felt by parents and by school staff, as well as by some children. To that end, we hope to email one full plan rather than drip-feeding pieces of information to families. However, the Board is encouraged by the engagement on social media and encouraged the school leadership team to continue to post updates there, as has been happening this week. In this way, parents and staff members can choose whether to receive the information or not. We hope that this helps everyone to build up positively to returning to school without adding to anyone's stress or anxiety.

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Twitter: ​https://twitter.com/CitywestETNS