Note from the Superintendent: COVID procedures for the start of school
Parents,
We are looking forward to seeing you this week for your child’s school orientation and to kick off this new school year! After a challenging school year last year we are looking forward to a year of resiliency. We plan to bounce back with a year of joy, unity and care in our school experiences that focuses on a healthy trajectory forward!
There have been questions arising around the school district’s approach to pandemic response strategies for this school year. In considering the need to balance physical and mental health with education, we began this planning by identifying priorities for our decision making response. The following two priorities have been developed and used to guide pandemic response decision making for the 2021-22 school year:
- Offer a school experience as “pre-pandemic normal” as possible, as soon as possible.
- Prioritize unifying approaches to pandemic response measures.
While we know that there will continue to be disagreements around the decisions we make, please know that we are doing our best to check our decision making against these two priorities as we partner with Lake County’s local public health (LCPHA) in the development of health measures toward our pandemic response plan.
We have received approval of our plan and want to share with you the full covid response document that outlines our pandemic response measures and a brief rationale around these decisions. Please take a moment to review our plan below.
Additionally, we ask that as you attend orientations this week, all individuals wear a mask as our teachers and staff want to make sure we are here for the first day of school. If you are not comfortable wearing a mask you are welcome to reach out to your child’s teacher to receive the information in an alternative format.
I hope tomorrow brings lots of smiles and excitement as you meet with your child’s teacher(s) for a kick-off to this new school year! Thank you for everything you are doing to be the backbone of resiliency for your child and the extension of support for our staff that we love and need!
Sincerely,
Bethany Massey,
Superintendent, Lake County School District
COVID RESPOSE PLAN
In considering the need to balance physical and mental health with education the following priorities have been developed to guide pandemic response decision making for the 2021-22 school year:
- Offer a school experience as “pre-pandemic normal” as possible, as soon as possible.
- Prioritize unifying approaches to pandemic response measures.
The district will continue to partner with Lake County’s local public health (LCPHA) in the development of health measures toward our pandemic response plan. Individuals are welcome to take more preventative, self-directed measures such as wearing masks all the time. In addition to the specific protocols outlined below, Lake County School District (LCSD) is working to create the safest environment possible for our students through tried-and-true disease prevention measures such as standard health and hygiene practices.
PANDEMIC RESPONSE MEASURE of 2020-21 | ACTION TO BE TAKEN FOR AUGUST 2021 BACK TO SCHOOL | RATIONALE |
School structure (remote vs. hybrid vs in-person) | Return to fully in-person school options. | As recommended by Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority. Quarantine guidance has shifted to support less remote learning requirements. |
Mask wearing | General Practice:Indoors for PK-6th grade students and staff and any other guests in these buildings. For 7th-12th grade students and staff, and persons in these buildings, masks are recommended. Following Holidays/High Travel Breaks:Indoors in all spaces for the week following the break. High Community Spread:Indoors in all spaces. School Events/Activities:For PK-6 activities we require all adults to wear a mask. For 7th-12th activities we strongly encourage mask wearing. | Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends the use of masks in schools. As a vaccine for our twelve and under population is not yet an option, we are requiring mask wearing by students and adults in these buildings. Once the option to be fully vaccinated for all of our 12 year and younger students is available, we will revisit this requirement. Following Holidays/High Travel Breaks:Based on last year’s data we know that we had a spike of cases in our communities following holiday breaks due to increased travel and intermingling of people, therefore we will ask all staff and students to wear masks for the week following a school break. We ask that the first week of school, all students and staff wear a mask while indoors.Labor DayHalloweenThanksgivingChristmas/New YearsSpring BreakMemorial Weekend High Community Spread:If community spread is high, we will return to the practice of wearing masks indoors in all spaces. School Events/Activities:We ask that individuals attending activities in our schools follow the daily school guidance. Therefore events in a PK-6 school would wear masks at the event. For 7th-12th grade events/activities individuals are strongly encouraged to wear masks as this helps us to keep our teachers and students in school when they are interacting with numerous individuals in a single event. |
Social-distancing | Encouragement of staff/student use of using social distancing practices of 3ft distancing as often as possible. | As social distancing offers a layer of protection, we would like to encourage high levels of this layer of protection as often as possible. |
Screening | Screening of your child should occur prior to your child coming to school. You should screen for temperature (needs to be under 99 degrees) and covid symptom check. Keep students home if exhibiting symptoms or fever. Communication that the expectations of last year’s screener will need to be maintained. Morning crew will check-in on kids mental and physical health, considering the screener identifiers. | Screeners helped significantly in early identification of illness. We value this practice however the logistics for families and schools of daily submission of the screener is significant and we believe families can be responsible to self-check their children before sending them to school without the formalized paperwork. With a secondary health-check during crew we may support families with this check. |
Hand washing | Continue with increased levels of sanitizer in classrooms and encouraging frequent hand washing. We encourage teaching staff to embed hand-washing/sanitizing into classroom activity time as appropriate. | As social distancing offers a layer of protection, we would like to encourage high levels of this layer of protection as often as possible. We are encouraging staff to include scheduled hand-washing/sanitizing into classroom activities to increase the frequency of this layer of protection. |
Ventilation | Continue Merv 13 use in schools. | Merv 13s offer a higher level of air quality and therefore we have invested in these filters using COVID relief funds. |
Cleaning | Increased and focused daily cleaning and sanitizing of common areas in addition to normal practices. | We will continue our traditional cleaning practices but believe our common areas still need additional attention and focus during the pandemic to support clean and healthy facilities. Our custodial staff will continue to support this increase. |
Bus/Transportation | Full capacity of busses will return (as opposed to hardship riders only). All riders will wear masks. | Limiting bus capacity created challenges for families that we want to overcome as best as possible for the upcoming school year. Yet, the ability to ensure cohorting and contact tracing is challenging and students are in very close proximity for an extended amount of time on the bus. For this reason, all riders will wear masks. |
Athletics | TBD by CHSSA. Seasons are anticipated running on traditional schedules. | |
Quarantine/Isolation | Each positive case of COVID will be contact traced, quarantined/isolated and communicated by LCPHA. The district will support the process as requested by LCPHA. High Community Spread:School and district employees will support LCPHA in contact tracing. Joint communications may occur. | Quarantine guidance has changed for schools which will allow the contact tracing to be more manageable and something that LCPHA staffing can support. If there are times when contact tracing needs outpace staffing capacity, our staff will support LCPHA. |
Vaccine clinics | Communication of LCPHA upcoming clinics or critical information to our families through our messaging system. | Throughout the pandemic there have been requests from our families to be more informed of COVID news. Therefore the district will support LCPHA in the distribution of the LCPHA materials specific to the pandemic to our families. |
Optional covid testing | COVID testing is available for students (with parent permission) in our school offices upon request. | The district has been provided nasal swab kits for COVID testing and certain staff have been trained on administering this testing. This is a resource we believe we can provide to families who wish to have their child tested for specific reasons. |