2024-2025 Participant Information Letter

Welcome

Thank you for choosing Akron Fossils and Science Center to assist with your educational needs. To help every participant get off to a great start, we’ve put together some important information concerning our Simply programming.

Drop Off and Pick Up

Participants who take classes on Wednesdays and Thursdays can be dropped off and picked up at the upstairs entrance (located on the Cleveland—Massillon Rd. side of our building). For those days ONLY, classes begin upstairs in the main classrooms. Due to this, the downstairs entrance (located on the Minor Rd. side of our building) will remain closed.  

Participants who take classes on Mondays and Tuesdays can be dropped off and picked up at the downstairs entrance. Because we use the entire building on these days, we take extra precautions to make sure the downstairs entrance is safe and secure.

Lunch and Recess

All of our program days include a lunchtime and recess/study hall break. This combined time is an hour long and is supervised. All participants are to bring their own lunches. Beverages and snacks are available for purchase at our gift shop during this time. Please note that we do not have a large selection or many healthy options. To aid with food wasting and nutritional accountability, it is our policy to have participants put any uneaten (unopened) food back into their lunch carriers to take home. This helps parents be aware of what their participants are consuming.

Phones and Electronic Devices

We understand that some parents want their participants to have a phone or electronic devise on them for direct contact. We ask that your participant respect the staff and others by following some rules. Participants that bring devices should keep them put away in their bookbag or on their person. There will be no sharing of devices or taking pictures of other students. Cheating will not be tolerated and will be addressed directly by the instructor.

Google Classroom

To help keep all participants and parents informed and engaged, our programs use Google Classroom as a resource. In the classrooms, we post all lesson materials and assignments at the end of the week to help keep an orderly account of the courses.

In addition, if you need to get in touch with your child’s instructor, send a notification of an absence, or if you have a question regarding your child’s class, Google Classroom is the most effective way to communicate with our instructors. You can leave a message on the classroom wall or send an email through the Google Classroom portal. For instructions on how to do this or for tips on how to best utilize the Google Classroom, click HERE.

To help keep this resource safe and uniform, we assign each participant an @akronfossils.org email to access the classrooms. We create the emails for each participant using their full first and last name with no capital letters. The password that will be used to access the email and classroom account will be: AFSCSimply. Please note that the password is case sensitive and can be changed once the Google account is accessed. Each course will be managed by their respective instructors and only be accessible for participants in each corresponding course.

As we near the start of classes, each participant will be sent an email invitation to join the classrooms for the classes that they have signed up for. Please make sure to log-in to the new email account to accept the classroom invitations. If you have any issues with your account, please let us know and we will attempt to get it worked out. If you would like to set up one Google Classroom for your whole family instead of individual classrooms per participant, please send an email to the address at the end of this letter with your request.  

Missed Days

If your child is going to be absent from class, please notify their instructor/s prior to the start of class. A Google Meet tab is available on the front page of the classroom for students to access from home in the case of an absence or a vacation. This has proven very helpful in times of varying weather conditions and sickness. Please note, most instructors will not have the Google Meet on in the classroom unless they are notified of an absence. Please let your instructor know if you need to access the class from home to make sure that they have it on and available.

Inclement Weather Days

Due to the vast area our participants travel from, we have a two-step policy for cancellations. First, we consider closing when the Copley-Fairlawn School District closes. Because of our unique situation of starting later than most educational organizations and not having participants who walk or are bussed, this policy does not always apply to our programming. For this reason, we ask all participants to take an additional step and check their emails and Google Classroom(s) to see if the closing is going to be overturned. We will post closing information in the Google Classroom(s), on the parent portal of the website, on the Facebook group, and we will send out an email by 7 a.m. This usually only happens once or twice a year, so hopefully it will not be too much trouble for everyone to take that extra step.

When a closure does occur, we add the make-up day to the end of the second semester, extending our end date by one week. We will do this for all missed days. We also host an (optional) End of the Year Pot Luck after all classes are made up, which sometimes extends into May. Please be aware of this as you make plans for the end of the school year.

Field Trips

Our Simply classes will occasionally host field trips. These events are optional and usually have an additional expense which is not included in the cost of the class. Because of miscellaneous scheduling variables, we do not guarantee to hold field trips on the same day as the class. If your participants’ class hosts a field trip, you will receive all the details in advance to plan accordingly.

Communication

Communication is something we are working to improve upon this year. It is important to us that parents and participants are well informed and up-to-date on all that is going on throughout the year. We have several ways in which we will communicate important information. Google Classroom remains the most effective way to stay up-to-date on your participants’ classes. Occasionally, we will send out emails in addition to posting information on the Google Classroom platform. Please make sure your email address is current and that your mailbox is not full. This year we’ve set up a private parent portal that you can access on our website, as well as a private Facebook group for parents and participants to communicate with each other. Go to www.akronfossils.org and click on “Simply Parent Portal” in the menu bar at the top of the page. You will find a calendar of events, links to Google Classroom and the Facebook group, a family directory, a payment portal and more. A password is required to enter. The password is: Simply@AFSC2425. Please do not share this password with others outside of the Simply Program family of parents and participants.

If you have any questions that were not covered in this letter, feel free to let us know. We look forward to a great year!

AFSC Simply Programs Staff

simplyconnect@akronfossils.org