August 26, 2020

Dear La Grande Virtual Learning Academy Families,

First, welcome to the La Grande Virtual Learning Academy family! Our staff are excited to be working with your family to support your student this coming school year. While the 2020/21 school year is shaping up to be a very different school year, we will strive to meet learning needs and provide support to help your student be successful this academic year.

We have appreciated your patience in getting the school year started. On August 6^th, the district started contacting each family to know what programming would best support students. On August 17^th, our staff received the first list of names of families that wanted to participate in La Grande Virtual Learning Academy and started to make contact to determine schedules and visit about your student’s needs. However, as families have learned more about our district program options, we have experienced a high volume of change and additions within the last week. We are working to make contact with the over 250 families that have enrolled in our program and are excited about the growth we have experienced in the last month. We have submitted requests for courses with our curriculum vendor, IMESD, and are in communication with them regarding usernames and passwords so students can login and get started on. Information will initially be coming to your student’s school email account so please watch for this information there. We will follow-up with an email to parents with the same information. Like our district elementary school, our first week is focused on making sure students technology and resources to be successful and start building relationships with their assigned LLA staff. Student logins for classes will come mid-week and classes officially start on Sept. 8^th. As IMESD is a regional curriculum vendor, this start date reflects a balance between all 18 partner district’s school calendars and we apologize for the delay for our students.

We want to remind you of our Chromebook and hotspot checkout times at Willow Elementary Gym on August 27^th (Noon – 7pm) and August 28^th (7am – Noon). If you cannot make these times, you are welcome to come by Willow Elementary from 8am – 3pm the first week of school to check out a device as well. As you can imagine, our district has had a high demand for Chromebook at all school and program locations. We are offering Chromebook and hotspots to families who need these devices to access their classes. If you have your own device or Internet service, we ask that you do not check out a district device at this time so we can meet the needs of all students. We ordered several hundred more devices this summer, and have recently been notified that they will arrive mid-September. We will keep you updated on the availability of devices once they arrive. Parents will need to checkout devices and complete required paperwork as these technology carries a financial lability if broken or not returned.

To help orientate you in our program, we will be hosting a virtual open house on Tuesday (Sept. 1) from 6:00pm – 7:00pm. You can join our virtual open house by clicking on the following link: https://meet.google.com/ink-gcjd-zia. We look forward to see you there and helping to start the year off right, together!

Sincerely,

Scott Carpenter

Director of Education Programs

La Grande Virtual Learning Academy

LLA Orientation Letter