TO MEMBERS OF WEIBEL CHESS 2019-2020 AND OTHER POSSIBLY INTERESTED PARTIES:
I hope all of you are doing well. I know it has a been a rough year for all of us. I closed Weibel Chess on Friday, March 13th last year. The Fremont schools closed a day later, I believe.
I do not doubt that fairly soon the schools will open with safety prodigals in place. I suspect we will be able to reopen Weibel Chess sometime next Fall. This will necessitate some changes in the program.
As most of you know I have established a Weibel Chess Committee under the leadership of Kwee Kuntjara for this was to be my last year, after 33 years running the program. I did not want to turn Weibel Chess over to a for-profit Chess Company (even if some of them are non-profits). There have been two parent run Fremont school chess programs in our area who did so years back and they have not only lost their school identity, but the number of students participating dropped dramatically.
The Weibel Chess Committee met a few times a fair number of months ago. The Chair of the Committee, Kwee Kuntjara, has set a Zoom meeting for tomorrow, Friday night, March 12, at 7:30 PM. He and I would like to invite any of you who are interested or might be interested in being a member of the committee to attend or just to observe to please let me know ASAP. WeibelChess@comcast.net and I will send you the Zoom connection.
For those of you who are looking forward to seeing Weibel Chess back in operation here is a summary of what changes I feel will have to occur due to the still lurking dangers of Covid 19 in the Fall:
Weibel Chess, when we reopen will have to use only the Multi-use Room. The membership will be limited to between 30 and 45 students with the Club on Tuesday and the same number on the Team on Friday. The hours on the Friday Team meetings will be reduced. These changes will create good social distancing, better air circulation and clean-up that might need to include disinfectants.
The number of members will be reduced by more than half of those we had. Of course, without Sixth Grade we would have lost a few members in any case. There will be only a need for three instructors on each day instead of the seven we had for Club and six we had for Team in 2019-2020. I will hope we can get back three instructors from last year. Two are no longer in the area and most of those that are now work near full-time for the big Scholastic Chess companies.
The big question is how we will cut off membership. Those parents who were members in previous years will have first shot until a set date and then Weibel Chess will be open to the Weibel community at large. I believe that on the Friday Team we should reserve a few spaces for players new to Weibel who have competed in U.S. Chess Federation tournaments and have a rating.
Keep safe and if you have not yet been vaccinate as my wife and I have, I hope you will be able to obtain yours soon.
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