Good evening! Happy Labor Day! We all hope that you and your child(ren) enjoyed the summer and are ready for school to begin tomorrow! We certainly are! Over the summer our teachers, administrators and staff members attended workshops, refined plans and schedules, while our facilities team completed lots of projects across the district - including the complete repaving of two 6th Grade Center parking lots, upgrading bathrooms at Richland Elementary, and completely renovating the whole right side of the District Service Center building for our new 8-12th grade program called The Academy at Quakertown.
What is really cool for all of our students attending the high school is the new Panther Cafe. It is like having our own Starbucks (I am a really big fan) which will have lots of beverages and food items for sale for the entire high school community all day long. Chartwells, our food service provider, paid for the entire project, as a part of their renewed contract with the district. And yes, Wawa will continue to be the coffee of choice for those who are interested, and booster clubs will have access to the facility to support evening and weekend activities.
Tomorrow, and the rest of the week, we are expected to have record high temperatures and be very hot. With the heat index, it could climb over 100 degrees! We still have two buildings, Neidig and Quakertown Elementary Schools without air conditioning. There are only a few select classrooms in those buildings with window mounted air conditioning units. Earlier today, our Facilities team checked all of our buildings to insure building HVAC systems were up and operational. We are still working through the "punch list" at the high school, and know we have two rooms with issues, along with the front office area.
Therefore, for safety reasons and planning purposes, tomorrow and the rest of the first week of school, I wanted to let you know. We are considering and planning for the possibility of running only half day schedules for Neidig and Quakertown Elementary Schools. It all depends on the early morning temperatures and what is expected later each day. The final decision and notification to parents and staffs at these two buildings will be no later than 10:30 am each day. I truly apologize in advance for the inconvenience.
In case you missed it last week, at the link is the newsletter for opening the new school year from the Board of School Directors. Have a wonderful new school year. Welcome back!!!
Bill Harner
Superintendent, QCSD
Twitter: @bharner
Email: [email protected]