Happy Friday Parents,

I hope this update finds you and your family well! I want to give you a few updates as we close out the week.

First of all, I want to say how much I have enjoyed seeing all the messages, parades and honorariums being given to our teachers in this time of teacher appreciation. As a former teacher and administrator at the school level, I know how much it means to see the community take a minute to thank us for the job we do. What an awesome community we live in and I want to tell you once again, thank you so much for entrusting us with your children!

In light of Teacher Appreciation Week, I would like to announce our Teacher of the Year recipients.  Drum roll please!!! Our Elementary Teacher of the Year is Laura Ruth Hunter! Mrs. Hunter teaches at J. Larry Newton Elementary School. Our Secondary Teacher of the Year is Dianne Casolaro! Mrs. Casolaro teaches at Daphne High School. Every school in the district awards a Teacher of the Year, from those, a district Teacher of the Year is chosen by a panel of judges. Congratulations to Mrs. Hunter and Mrs. Casolaro! What a tremendous honor!

This morning, Governor Ivey updated her health and safety orders for the state. As I'm sure you have heard, personal care businesses, restaurants and many others have been authorized to open while observing social distancing and sanitation requirements. I know how excited everyone is to see our country getting back to some level of normalcy but please continue practicing social distancing, be aware and safe in all of your activities.

How do these updated orders apply to our schools? As of now, these orders do not change anything with regards to our school system. We remain under State Superintendent Eric Mackey's order to halt all campus and school-sponsored events through June 5^th. We are evaluating our options moving forward through the summer and plan to provide an update before Memorial Day regarding summer activities.

As a reminder, our After-School Care Summer programs will not be open this summer under any circumstances.

Congratulations to the Class of 2020! We have a lot of very excited seniors who are ready to move on to the next chapter in their lives. We previously made the decision to postpone all graduation events until the month of June. We expect to have an announcement about graduation before Memorial Day. We are trying our very best to provide some type of in-person event, but we are dependent on direction from the state superintendent. Please know that we have backup plans should this not be allowed but considering today’s announcement, I am optimistic we will be able to do something in-person.

We have two weeks left in our school year and I know so many of you are counting down the days. I have been told our elementary students have completed more than a million lessons through their distance learning programs and the number of disciplinary issues has fallen dramatically since we started this program. Thank you so much for all of your support and effort through this process. You make it truly an honor to serve you alongside what I consider to be the best 4,000 coworkers anyone could ever ask for.

Stay safe and enjoy the weekend!

Eddie Tyler, Superintendent

#BaldwinProud #CommunityStrong