November 29, 2021

Dear North Shore Community Members,

At our recent meeting of the Board of Education, I lauded our performing Arts Department for creating bands, orchestras, and choruses of admirable size that are further augmented by additional performance groups that add to our students’ experiences and community enjoyment. I also stated that these talented musical groups are not just numerically large, but traditionally offer enjoyable well-attended concerts.

I then lamented that because of the size of these groups, and the finite seating in our high school auditorium, a decision had been made to offer these concerts virtually this year. We would not be able to invite audiences to join us for this traditional celebration of the season. We had promised then, and are re-committed now, to a high-quality video production of these concerts that will be shared with parents. Further news on that enhancement will be forthcoming.           

Predictably, this news was met with disappointment, and I promised to revisit the issue and try to find a way to modify that decision. A thought that was frequently shared with me was that this would be a parent’s only opportunity to see their child in a winter concert. While we unfortunately are not able to accommodate all of our parents at this time, there is one group that is uniquely impacted by this decision, and those are the parents of our seniors who will literally never see their child in a high school winter concert again. Therefore, I share with you today the decision to offer a live winter concert at North Shore High School on both December 13 and 14 and invite the parents of our seniors to attend. While this represents a small fraction of the parents who would want to attend, we hope that this small accommodation will be seen as our best response to a unique situation.

I am not pleased to limit attendance at concerts and I hope to find ways to integrate parents back into our buildings. These events, as large as they are, do not lend themselves to further revision while still operating within the current COVID guidelines and recommendations. I fervently hope that other celebratory events are not impacted in this manner and will look to other ways to work within the parameters. At this time, I feel obligated to obey the guidelines.

 

Sincerely
Dr. Tom Dolan 
Interim Superintendent of Schools