| December 3, 2020 MUSD Families, As we enter the homestretch of the first semester, I wanted to take a quick moment to thank you for your continued partnership and cooperation. I continue to be incredibly proud of the efforts being put forth by our families, teachers, staff, and administrators to collectively support our students in their hybrid and remote settings. These times are undoubtedly challenging, but I remain convinced that we will get through this stronger…together. I also wanted to take this opportunity to provide an update related to the current health metrics that were released by the Arizona Department of Health Services earlier today. As expected, we are seeing increases in each of the benchmarks being tracked by health officials in Pima County. In fact, today we saw the Percent Positivity metric move into the "red" category. This means that we now have two out of three metrics (Cases per 100,000 and Percent Positivity) in the "red" category or substantial transmission range. The Pima County Health Department has stated that we are experiencing an accelerated transmission of COVID-19. With that said, it is the Pima County Health Department's position that hybrid learning should continue to be the model of instruction at this time and in the weeks following the winter break for school districts. Certainly, this information can change based upon new information, but at this time hybrid learning is the supported model of instruction. As such, we are asking for your assistance as we look ahead to the third quarter of the school year. The included Parent/Guardian Commitment link provides a survey asking for a commitment for the third quarter as to your preference for hybrid/in-person or remote learning. This commitment will allow us to plan for the beginning of the next semester. Please know that we are aware that circumstances change and we will continue to remain flexible and work with families as needed moving forward. We will continue to monitor the health metrics and recommendations from health professionals as we look forward to expanding in-person learning opportunities as these numbers improve. In the interim we will continue to monitor and evaluate unique circumstances at each school site with regards to active Covid cases. This includes ensuring that we have adequate staff, due to quarantining and isolation guidelines, to maintain safe learning environments. In the event we are unable to ensure a safe learning environment a decision to return to a remote learning environment may be necessary on a case by case basis. We will communicate as we have been doing these past few weeks. This includes notifying staff members across the District and families from impacted school sites each time we have positive case. We will also continue to update our MUSD COVID-19 Dashboard as well as information and resources available on our website. Thank you, Daniel Streeter, Ed.D. Superintendent | 
