Dear ACS Families,

We are very excited to start school on Wednesday, September 1. This will be full in-person learning with a normal class schedule each day. Faculty returned to campus on Monday, and everyone is getting prepared to welcome your children back to school.

We are monitoring the covid situation very closely, and we are confident that we can open school safely. We have pushed faculty and staff to get vaccinated and have done our best to facilitate this effort. When school opens, 97% of our faculty and staff will be vaccinated. Additionally, with the help of AUB, many of our students aged 16 and older have also been vaccinated. Now that the Health Ministry has approved the vaccine for students 12 and older, we are trying to facilitate vaccinations of this age group as well.

Many of our covid safeguards will remain in place for the start of the school year. Everyone will be required to wear a mask when they are on campus, inside and outside. Students will be able to take short mask breaks when they are outside and able to be socially distant. While wearing masks is not ideal, especially during these warmer months, we believe this is a necessary precaution. Students should have two masks at available to them each day. We are structuring our classrooms to maximize social distancing, and we have orchestrated lunch and recess protocols for different grade levels to enable us to maintain social distancing. We will also conduct daily temperature checks of all students and staff as they enter campus each morning.

In an effort to limit the number of different people in our community each day, parents and visitors will not be permitted in school buildings unless they have a pre-arranged appointment. Parents are allowed to go to the Business Office.

Drop-off and pick-up procedures will be nearly the same as last year. The principals of each division will be sending information about this to families later today. Please be aware that traffic on the corniche coming from the Manara area has been quite heavy due to car lines at the gas station.

Bus transportation service will be available to families. Here is the link that has detailed information and a sign-up form: https://www.acs.edu.lb/page.cfm?p=1349.

We will have snack and lunch service this year, and we are awaiting final details from our caterer. In order to prevent clustering of students and to expedite the serving process, only cold bag lunches will be served. We are being very conservative to start the year, and we hope to be able to offer expanded options in the coming months. Please note that the lunch program will start on Monday, September 6.

As is true throughout Lebanon, our diesel fuel supply will be somewhat unpredictable. In the interest of conserving fuel, we are dramatically reducing power consumption by cutting AC use on campus. We may be able to run AC units for part of the day, but students should be prepared for warmer temperatures in school than they are used to. This is an emergency measure, and we will modify our approach when the diesel situation improves.

Our goal is to make this academic year as normal a year as possible for students and families. At the same time, we know that we are facing unprecedented challenges in a situation that is fluid and unpredictable. My goal is to ensure that we are delivering regular, honest, and transparent communication to our entire community. While we hope that everything runs smoothly, we know that this will not be the case at times. I just ask for your patience and understanding as we work through various challenges.

I look forward to welcoming back our ACS families next week. I'm thrilled to be starting my first school year as head of ACS!

Sincerely,