School open Thursday ONLY if you can travel by school bus or car
Dear Parents and Students,
As you know, we made the very difficult decision in liaison with the EDB to close for one further day, since we still could not guarantee that our students would be able to access the site safely on Wednesday. Since then, the authorities have made further progress with clearing the area local to the school. However there are still a number of remaining issues.
We are pleased to say that SIS will reopen to students tomorrow (Thursday) – but only for those students who can safely reach us.
We have spoken with the school bus providers and they have told us that they will be able to operate tomorrow, with a few adjustments. However, public buses will not be running on Nam Fung Road, meaning that students will not be able to reach the school by public bus.
We know that many students travel to school by MTR to Ocean Park and then walk up the hill. It will not be possible to do this tomorrow as the pavements are still blocked.
So, our message to you today is this: If you travel to school using a school bus, then you will be able to safely reach us. If you use public transport, you will not.
If you are considering driving your son or daughter to school tomorrow, please be aware that the roads in the area are still very busy. We do not expect the public transport situation to be resolved during the day tomorrow so, again, our message is clear:
If you are driving your child to school tomorrow, please give yourself more time than normal and, crucially, only do this if you are in a position to also collect your son or daughter from school at the end of the day.
We know that this situation is far from ideal, but our priority is our students’ safety. We want you to be in full possession of the facts before you make any decision about whether or not your son or daughter attends school tomorrow. If you have any doubt, our advice is to keep your son or daughter at home.
Many of you will be concerned about the impact of these lost days on your son’s or daughter’s education. We want to assure you that this is also at the front of our minds. That is why we will no longer be having Monday 24th September as a staff development day. We will open the school for classes for all students who are in a position to attend, although we recognise this may be difficult for some of you.
We want to thank you for your patience and understanding in these extraordinary times. We have attached more detailed information, below. If you have any other questions, please do get in touch with the school.
FURTHER INFORMATION
1) TRAVEL
Your son or daughter should only attend school on Thursday if it is safe for them to travel. Each family must make their own decision about this, based on their local situation and the transport options available to them. Teachers will continue to send work to students electronically, for the benefit of those students who still cannot travel.
a) School Buses
We are now confident that our school buses can safely access the SIS site. However, we are aware of remaining difficulties at certain local pick up points, and on certain bus routes. The PTA and bus company will communicate with you directly if it is necessary to change the timing and/or location of your local pickup. Please watch carefully for any communication from them.
b) Car
It is now possible to access the school site by car, though please drive very cautiously as there are still currently sections of Deepwater Bay Drive that are partially blocked.
c) Public Transport
As noted above your son or daughter must not attempt either to come to school, or to return home from school on Thursday by public transport, for reasons of safety.
d) After school activities
After school activities are running as normal with the exception of the Year 7 football activity. Students normally doing this activity who travel by school bus will be able to leave on the earlier bus.
2) SIS SITE
We would like to record our tremendous thanks to our Facilities and Support teams, who have worked tirelessly for the last few days to get the SIS site back to normal. As you can imagine, following a storm of this intensity, there was considerable minor damage – but fortunately nothing major. We are pleased to confirm that will be able to immediately reopen all areas of the school to students when they return, with a small amount of ongoing maintenance still taking place in a small number of areas.
3) THURSDAY 20th SEPTEMBER – ESF Festival of Music
Unfortunately, it has proved necessary to cancel this. We very much hope this will be rescheduled for later in the year.
4) MONDAY 24th SEPTEMBER – Regular lessons offered
As you know, Monday 24th September was scheduled to be a CPD Day, with students not required to attend. However, given the loss of learning time this week, Monday 24th will now be offered as a regular teaching day, with students invited to attend lessons as normal.
We do understand that it may be impractical for some students to attend on that day at such short notice, especially if you already have travel plans. Therefore, teachers will duplicate all lessons electronically to all students, for the benefit of those unable to attend. We apologise for this change at such short notice, but in these very exceptional circumstances, we feel this is the best offer we can make to help our students catch up any missed learning time.
In difficult situations like this, we realise how fortunate we are to have such a strong community. We thank you for your ongoing support of the school this week, and look forward to getting back to normal as quickly as possible.
