Dear ASD Community,

Week four of the 2021-2022 school year closes with positive notes that no new COVID-19 cases have been identified in our school community, even after over 400 faculty and staff were PCR tested on Sunday as part of Qatar’s ongoing assessment of the pandemic. This week also saw daily school begin for our youngest Pre-K 3 learners. Next week our Pre-K 4 and Kindergarten students will also start to attend school five days per week, a welcome benefit for these students. This move, supported by the ASD Board, incorporated two available classroom spaces and the direct hire of locally available faculty to move these grade levels to 15 students or less per class.

The school community at large continues to wait hopefully for news of the broader opening of Qatar’s schools. ASD remains committed to opening doors to all students as soon as the Ministry guidelines allow.

During this last week, we continued a pointed inquiry with MOEHE leaders about our formal requests for exemption from class size maximums of 15 students and social distancing expectations of 1.5 meters per student. While our formal request has yet to be approved, I also met officials at the Ministry of Public Health headquarters to gain insight into how long students, staff, and families must wait for news or announcement of when current limitations will end. From personal meetings and official correspondence, ASD believes the end of September/beginning of October is targeted as the timeframe for the next changes to current rules.

ASD understands and shares the frustration attendant upon this long waiting period. Rumors abound regarding what other schools are doing; rumors are difficult to monitor and manage. As your Director and as a colleague of many fellow Doha school leaders, I know that many other International Schools are operating as prescribed in Blended Learning models. I also know other schools -- like ASD -- have amplified or repeated our request to remove the harshest limitations to fuller school attendance. Aware of the many disparate accounts of the reality across the city, MOEHE tweeted a message this week to educators and parents to heed only official sources…which is hard to do when our official sources are not yet speaking!

As part of our ongoing commitment to our ASD Values of Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, and Compassion, we will host another Virtual Conversation Zoom session on Wednesday, September 22 at 7:00 pm. At this session, we will update you on how we will confront the challenges and opportunities ahead. Should there be no officially stated end to the current limitations imposed by MOPH/MOEHE on school capacity, class size, and social distancing, ASD is committed to making additional adjustments to our current Blended Learning model. Please click here or on the image below to register to join the conversation.

I close with great thanks to teams at each of our four divisions for this week’s presentations regarding our curriculum, and with thanks for the wonderfully committed educators here to inspire and empower ASD students. ‘Back to School’ and ‘Curriculum Night’ presentations were well-attended and supported by great questions and great dialogue. To every parent supporting our ASD students, we offer our thanks and look forward to sharing more with you on Zoom next week!

Sincerely,

Steve Razidlo

Director of the American School of Doha