Hello Ability Hacker Friends! It’s been a while, and I’ve missed you. Just as our life started getting back to normal after a year full of medical challenges for our family, the Novel Coronavirus entered the picture – throwing life sideways once again.

This past week has been full of stress for me (as I’m guessing it has been for many of you) as I evaluate our back to school choices and start to cobble together our plan for the 2020-2021 school year. I’ve written to more than a handful of doctors and medical professionals, submitted multiple questions to our school district, had a conference with our principal, and have spoken to more fellow parents than I have in a long time.

Sometimes, though, I feel like things are so overwhelming that I don’t know where to start. In case this feeling is familiar to you, I’m sharing two sample letters below.

• LetterToMedicalProfessional_COVID_BackToSchool (Word Document)
• LetterToSchool_COVID_BackToSchool (Word Document)

Letter to Medical Professionals:  This draft medical professionals letter (linked here) follows the same structure I used to email members of our medical team (via MyChart): Doctors, Nurse Practitioners, Therapists, Psychologists, etc. You could also use this as a talking script if you prefer a live discussion. The structure is as follows:

1. Remind them of my family and make them think of my kid as a person.
2. Questions in the middle, trying to focus on the information they can uniquely provide based on their specialty area.
3. Context of the choice we are trying to make / my family’s ability to manage these choices.
4. Grateful thanks at the end.

Letter to the School: This draft school letter (linked here) follows the general structure I used for emailing our principal and members of the back to school planning team in our district. It is similar to the letter for medical professionals, but tweaked to consider the unique position school leaders find themselves in. Again, this could easily be adapted as a discussion guide for a live conversation rather than a letter.

1. Recognize all the hard work they are doing to get schools ready to open.
2. Remind them of my child, their grade level, and specific needs.
3. Questions in the middle.
4. Grateful thanks at the end.

Both of the draft letters include a number of questions to help navigate the back to school decision for families managing unique medical or developmental needs. My hope is that these help you get started and give you a framework to get the answers you need in order to feel confident in your decision.

I realized going through this back to school decision process, that in addition to thinking about how the basics of how school will run, I also have to think through the specialized experiences unique to my child: frequent nurse visits, being pulled out of class for therapies, getting help with academics in small group formats, etc. I knew the school wouldn’t have answers to all of my questions, but I wanted to understand how the school is thinking about these situations, and wanted to make sure they are top of mind for the staff of the school.

Thinking of all of you as you work through this challenging decision for your family.