July 23, 2020
Dear Families of Special Education Students:
First and foremost, I want to thank you for the incredible patience, resilience, and focus you have shown for
your children and our staff over the last four months. As I said to the Board of Education last night, this has,
without question, been an incredibly difficult time in our history and certainly in the life of a school system.
As I said last night, we all want the very same thing: to have children back in school buildings interacting
with dedicated educators and staff. We are working very hard to accomplish that as soon as possible, and we
will be guided by health and safety recommendations of the county and state. There are no more important
factors in our decisions than the health and safety of our children and employees.
I have had many discussions with our Anne Arundel County Health Officer, Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman, about
in-person instruction. Together, we are exploring ways to carry out limited in-person instruction and supports
for students with special needs. Those in-person experiences will likely begin in our three special centers and
expand from there. We will convey information about that to you as soon as we are able.
We will continue with virtual learning when school opens in September, though the experiences we offer
students will be far more robust than they were in the spring. We have spent the summer providing
professional development to teachers and they have worked with students to enhance our virtual platform use.
Instruction in the fall will be real-time virtual teaching four days a week, so that students can continue – as
best as we are able with the current restrictions – to develop relationships with their teachers and classmates
while learning.
As we identify ways to serve some of our students being served under an IEP within the school environment in
a safe and productive way, we will communicate directly with the parents of those students. I assure you that
this is a top priority for me.
We appreciate the challenges that this situation brings to families, staff and students and look forward to
healthy and effective solutions.
I thank you again for your patience and understanding during this very challenging time.
Sincerely,

George Arlotto, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
GA/bm