School administrators and calendar committee members met today with community partners to discuss reopening school this fall. Parent and staff survey results were discussed, and various scenarios were considered. It is likely that families will be given the option to either send their children to school following CDC guidelines (social distancing, temperature checks, and wearing a mask) OR to keep their children at home and continue with non-traditional instruction. The use of split schedules (MWF, etc.), dividing classes into alternate dates, intermittent school closures, options for the delivery of instruction during NTI times, sanitizing needs, transportation, and food service considerations were some of the topics discussed. No decisions have been finalized yet.
On July 13th, superintendents from the 16th region will be meeting to discuss input from their communities and to develop a consistent plan for our entire area. Plans specific to Elliott County Schools will be discussed at the July 21st Board meeting, and telephone calls to parents will be made over the course of the following few days in order to get an accurate count of how many students plan to attend in-person class and how many plan to participate in NTI classes. Once all information is gathered, plans for the fall semester will be finalized and publicized.
The bottom line is that it is likely that school will resume for students no sooner than August 26th, and possibly not before September 8th.
The results of both the parent survey and the staff survey that were recently conducted are available on this webpage. Additional information will be published as soon as it is available.