WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — It’s a new school year with a new mission at the Solomon Schecter Day School in West Hartford.
“I think everything is doable we started our week last week with the theme music for Mission: Impossible,” says head of school Andrea Rose Cheatham Kasper.
Kasper is finding new ways to keep 105 students safe and learning and that’s meant heading outside, “I actually think there are lots of bright spots that can come out of crisis in general and out of this crisis in particular.”
The pre-K to grade 8 students have largely traded in their indoor classrooms for the great outdoors.
“So yesterday, like going into it I thought it was going to be pretty odd, but yesterday it was pretty easy to adapt, because the teachers were really good with setting us up,” says 8th grader Lily Temkin.
Mom Sheryl Levin was nervous about sending her third grade son Sammy back to school. “The whole summer I was really concerned about school, and I didn’t know if I was making the right decision coming back live and just seeing what they did totally comforted me, I felt like he was safe,” she says.
It’s great news for the team in charge who knows they’ll need to be ready to adapt.
“We know and we say it over and over again anything can change at a moments notice and it’s already happened several times,” says Kasper.
Lily says just being back is the best part of the new year. “I think definitely being in person again and also the weather is really nice so it was just really nice to be outside,” she says.