Letter Day Explanation Letter

August 19, 2015

Dear Parents of Lower School Children,

Below is an explanation of Columbus Academy’s six-day schedule.  For some, this may be redundant, for the rest of us who have for years operated on the traditional five-day rotation, read on.  I know that I, too, am minding my A’s and F’s.

The Lower School schedule is what is referred to as a Six-Day-Schedule.  Because the schedule calls for six days and school is held five days per week, this configuration requires that days be called by letter names rather than by days of the week.  Thus, while the “outside world” and all events scheduled outside of school hours refer to Monday through Friday, our daily in-school schedule will refer to days A, B, C, D, E and F.  While this might sound confusing in explanation, in real life this system becomes second nature almost immediately to the school population and the brief adjustment period provides some good laughs and no real problems.  The purpose of a six-day schedule is to provide far greater flexibility which in turn allows a faculty, over time, to make child-driven decisions regarding how much time is spent in which areas.  Additionally, a six-day rotation allows for accommodation of vacation days, etc., without uneven loss of class time.

In most cases, our six-day schedule will roll along without your needing to be aware of the letter day at all. The exceptions are days when children need to dress differently as some children do on P. E. or swimming days, for example.  For this reason, I am sending you a calendar for the year so that you can see which letter days fall on which dates.

So—the new year is launched. Today was A-day and tomorrow is B-day.

Sincerely,

Kay Mason

Head of Lower School