Dear ACS Families,
Welcome back! I hope you all had a restful, relaxing summer with family and friends.
We are all looking forward to the first day of school on Thursday, September 1. The opening days schedules are slightly different from division to division, so please watch out for information from your respective principals.
Despite the continuing challenges that people in Lebanon are facing, I am very pleased to report that enrollment is up from last year. Thankfully, attrition is down dramatically, and we've added quite a few new students to our community. In addition, we are welcoming 14 new international faculty and staff as well as 31 local faculty and staff. We welcomed these exceptional educators to campus last week, and we are so pleased they are part of the ACS community.
We expect the opening of school to be quite normal, but we are requiring all students, faculty, staff, and any visitors to campus to wear masks when they are indoors for the first two weeks of the school year. Although the incidence of Covid in Lebanon is still relatively low, there are some cases in our community. Moreover, with so many people returning from trips far and wide, we'd rather err on the side of caution.
I am also pleased to welcome Gourmet Royale Fancy Catering, our new dining service, to campus. We are very excited to work with Gourmet Royale to provide the best catering experience for our students and staff. We have already been impressed with their willingness to listen to feedback and their responsiveness.
Finally, we recently conducted a survey of students in grades 4-10 to gauge resilience in our school. This is part of our reaccreditation process, which we will be working on for the next few years. Although the survey results were generally quite positive, we were able to identify some areas where we see an opportunity to improve. I will share the summary findings in an upcoming newsletter.
Last year went by so quickly, and I am quite happy to be starting my second year as head of school at ACS. One of our areas of focus, of course, is to continue to alleviate the challenging financial situation of our faculty and staff, a situation we hope will improve significantly over the next few years. We are also thinking about longer term strategic initiatives for our school.
I want to wish your children a wonderful 2022/23 school year. I can't wait to welcome them back to campus next week.
Sincerely,
