This week, a federal judge ruled that Governor Wolf’s limits on congregant group sizes are unconstitutional. As a result of this ruling, we are now able to allow our band and cheerleaders to perform at the football game on Friday evening. In addition, each football player, cheerleader and member of the band will receive two event spectator tickets for their family members or friends. However, we will not be selling or distributing general admission or student tickets.

Mr. Erich Campbell painted a picture of Rocky Bleier over the summer for a great cause! Mr. Bleier autographed the painting and it is up for auction. The money raised will go toward Family and Teen Outreach.

View more photos on Flickr.

We the school year is off to a good start for everyone! View photos from the first day of school. 

We hope the school year is off to a great start for everyone. It has been so great to have students back in our buildings! We have a couple of updates that we want to share with you. 

Thank you to everyone who attended our Cyber Learning Program orientation in person or attended a learning material pick up this week. If you have already received your child's learning materials, you may disregard this email.

We realize some families could not make it to the orientation or to the pick up times we offered. Therefore, we are offering one more opportunity for elementary parents to pick up their child's materials for the Cyber Learning Program prior to the first day of school.

In an attempt to offer additional courses for secondary students (grades 7-12) who are enrolled in our Online/Cyber School Model or our Hybrid School Model through the district’s Cyber Learning Program, we will be adding live streaming for some courses that are not being offered  asynchronously through Edgenuity or Google Classroom.

As a result of this update, we are extending the enrollment deadline to Friday, August 21. We will then temporarily pause our Cyber Learning Program enrollment for secondary students (grades 7-12) from August 22-September 11. The enrollment registration date for elementary (grades K-6) is still today (Wednesday, August 19). 

Dear Parents/Guardians of VoTech Students:

If your child is a BASD student who attends Butler County Area Vocational-Technical School (BCAVTS) and requires transportation to/from VoTech during the "soft opening" week (09/01/2020 - 09/04/2020), please submit your request via the form linked below by Monday, August 24.

Soft Opening Vo-Tech Transportation Request: https://forms.gle/9gMK2ajd3nut5xp39

If you have any questions regarding BCAVTS transportation for your student, please contact our Transportation Department at 724-287-8723 or transportation@butler.k12.pa.us. 

Thank you!

Yesterday the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued additional guidance on when face coverings should be worn in our schools. Specifically, they are now requiring students to wear face coverings all day with very limited opportunities to remove them. According to the most recent guidance, students will NOT be able to remove their face covering even when they are seated 6 feet apart, unless they are taking a designated face covering break. 

PDE’s guidance now states:

Schools may allow students to remove face coverings when students are:

• Eating or drinking when spaced at least 6 feet apart; or

• When wearing a face covering creates an unsafe condition in which to operate equipment or execute a task; or

• At least 6 feet apart during “face-covering breaks” to last no longer than 10 minutes.

As we continue to prepare for the first day of school, we want to ensure that families have as much information as possible. You can view our Back to School plans here: www.basdk12.org/Content2/1766

However, within our back to school plans, there are important details about our Learning Pathways. We want to make sure we highlight that information so families are prepared to choose a Learning Pathway that best meets the individual needs of their family.   

If you intend to enroll your child in the Online/Cyber School Model, Secondary Hybrid School Model or Secondary Flexible Traditional School Model, please submit your child’s registration by the end of the night on August 19th in order for their assignment to be effective on the first day of school.  After August 19, we will be taking a Temporary Registration Pause, which is described below, to ensure we can accurately plan for the students first day of school.

We modified our school calendar at the School Board meeting on Monday, August 10. This change will only impact our secondary students at the Intermediate High School and Senior High School. All of our K-4 elementary schools, our Middle School and Center Avenue Community School will still begin the year as planned on September 1, 2020. 

Dear Butler Area School District Community:

I hope your families are safe and well. As we continue to prepare for the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, I want to provide our school community with an update. Our priorities for the 2020-2021 school year are:

• Stay safe. We will do all that we can to keep everyone in our school community safe.
• Reopen our schools. Unless the Governor issues a mandatory closure, we intend to open our schools.
• Provide options. This situation is constantly evolving as are the individual needs of our students. Our goal is to provide our families with several options as well as the flexibility to move between the learning options as needed.
• Support our students. We will continue to strive to support our students academically, socially and emotionally.

To meet these priorities, we have found it necessary to revise our initial plans to put additional strategies and options in place to keep students and staff safe while meeting the needs of our students. Our initial plan had three planned strategies based on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Red, Yellow and Green designation. We have added another level, which we are calling "Enhanced Green" in our reopening plans. 

Click to read our Fall 2020 reopening plans>

You can find all of this information on our website. https://www.basdk12.org/Content2/1766

Thank you for your continued patience and flexibility. 

Sincerely, 

Brian 

We know you have many questions about the reopening of our schools on September 1, 2020. We are currently developing plans to provide all students with a learning environment that is effective, as familiar as possible, and aligned to all guidelines/mandates for the safe reopening of schools. 

My goal is to share the details of our plan the first week of August. That will enable us to incorporate all of the most recent guidance and mandates from the state and hopefully still give our families time to process all of the new policies and procedures for the upcoming school year. 

With that said, there are a few things we know right now.