Valley Christian Families,
Today, Governor Ducey announced the closure of Arizona’s K-12 public and charter schools through the end of the current school year and gave private schools the opportunity to follow federal guidelines for school closures. In order to keep our students, staff, and families healthy and safe and to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we believe it best to plan on our physical campuses being closed through the end of the academic year based on the current projections. If this outlook drastically changes and we can guarantee a safe learning environment on our campuses, we do currently have the ability to alter this decision and return to school on May 1. However, that scenario remains unlikely.
While we were beginning to anticipate a long-term extension of the school closures, the physical closing of our campuses for the remainder of the year is difficult for all of us to process. Please know that Valley Christian will continue to fulfill our mission and deliver our distinctly Christian education online to our students. We will continue to prepare our students academically and connect with them in order to provide some normalcy and structure. Teaching, learning, and our community – although done remotely – will continue.
As a result of today’s announcement, it saddens us to announce that all campus extracurricular events are cancelled for the remainder of the year. This includes all performances, athletic contests, dances, and trips. We will continue to seek out new ways to connect and engage remotely during this unprecedented time.
Valley Christian remains committed to our mission for students to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, live like Him, and prepare academically, physically, socially, and spiritually, so they are enabled to make a difference in the world…even though that looks different than normal right now.
We also recognize the special situation in which our graduating classes find themselves. In the coming days, we will send a separate communication to the members of our Class of 2020 and their families about senior activities, including Commencement. We will also be communicating specifically in the coming days to our 8th grade families and Kindergarten families about their end of year activities. We promise this, while we may be unsure of what it will look like or when exactly it will take place because of statewide restrictions, we will gather together in person to celebrate our graduates and their accomplishments.
Our community, our Trojan family, is one of the most valued and unique things about our school. Already, we feel the loss of not being together physically as a community. We miss the athletic competitions, spring performances, and community celebrations. Today, this feeling has been worsened. However, we are so impressed by the efforts of faculty, staff, students, and parents to stay connected and to continue to find ways to celebrate our community while continuing the education at Valley Christian. With the reality of today’s announcement, we will commit to finding even more ways to stay connected and celebrate our community.
Please continue to reference our website, valleychristianaz.org/emergency, for the latest information regarding VCS. This site includes all of our updates and COVID-19 resources.
As always, we thank you for your partnership and will continue to be in regular communication with you.