Today is the last day of school for the 2019-2020 school year, and what a year it has been!

At the end of the most challenging school year in YES Prep history, we are full of gratitude for how our families have persisted through this unprecedented time. During the last two months, one of the major priorities for YES Prep has been to give our students the best possible remote learning experience possible, in order to keep them on the path to being college-ready when they graduate from YES Prep.

To that end, YES Prep distributed thousands of computers, served over 200,000 meals, and created the “Keep YES Prep Learning” platform, where we delivered virtual lessons to our 14,000 students.

To hear directly from our families about how they were doing and how our virtual learning program has been received, we sent out a family survey to all of our YES Prep families. Over 5,000 of our families completed the survey, and over 80% were satisfied with the quality of the remote learning their children received.

While we are proud of that progress, we also know that there is always room for improvement which is why we are already working to strengthen our remote learning programming for next year should we need to use it again.

For the 2020-2021 school year, we are still planning on starting school on schedule on Monday, August 17. While it is too soon to know whether we will be back in a fully virtual learning environment, back in our buildings, or some combination of distance and in-person learning, we remain unwavering in our commitment to educate the students of YES Prep on schedule in August. As we have more information, we will share this information with our families in a proactive manner.

While this was not the way any of us expected we would close out the school year, our YES Prep community has risen to the challenge—proving that we are indeed far stronger together than we are apart.

We thank our families for trusting us with the responsibility of educating their children, and thank you for being a valuable member of the YES Prep family. Now and always.