Masks (Per District Guidelines)
- Staff members will be provided masks and/or face shields based on requests/needs.
- Face Shields will be provided and the district is ordering masks for every staff member with the Maryville City School logo on them
- Staff members working with medically fragile students must wear a mask at all times. Medically fragile is defined as a child who has a chronic illness or severe medical disabilities requiring regular nursing visits and/or close monitoring, extraordinary medical monitoring, or on-going (other than routine) physician's care.
- Staff members assigned to check temperatures must wear a mask at all times.
- All faculty and staff are required to wear a face covering in common areas, large gatherings, class changes, anytime outside their classroom, and in the classroom when they cannot social distance of at least 6 feet. Staff members will wear masks and model those opportunities with their students, and families will be asked to also support responsive mask wearing. Teachers will implement social distancing, strategic seating/grouping, and extra handwashing/hygiene as often and feasible as possible.
- Students are strongly encouraged to wear a face covering on buses, during congested transitions (changing classes, dismissal), and when working in close proximity to peers and adults.
- Masks will be available for students. Free health department masks will be provided to schools; schools may sell specialty masks
- All school visitors are required to wear a mask.
- The specific guidelines for wearing masks will be adjusted based upon current CDC guidelines, community cases, and risk analysis and large group interactions.
Arrival
Overview
- Staff and students are encouraged to wear masks during arrival
- Parents will no longer be allowed to get out of the car to walk their students into the building.
- Parents will not be allowed to walk students to the classrooms and will have to drop off their students at the front entrance.
- Every student will have their temperature checked before entering the building.
- Once students have had their temperature checked, they will either go to the cafeteria if they are eating breakfast or to the gym if they are not.
- We will have additional staff members help in the morning to help take temperatures of car riders at the front entrance and take temperatures of bus riders at the back entrance.
- All staff members checking temperatures will be required to wear face coverings.
- Parents are asked to drop their students before 7:35 AM if they would like them to eat breakfast at school.
- All students except bus riders and Kindergarteners must be dropped off at the front entrance. There is no drop off at Davis or behind the school due to construction and mandatory temp checks.
- Any student that arrives at school after 7:35 AM will not be allowed to go to the cafeteria and will go directly to their classroom once their temperature has been checked. Special boxed breakfast arrangements will be made for students in need who arrive after 7:35 AM. If you want your child to be around the fewest children possible, eating breakfast at home and dropping off between 7:35-7:50 is the safest option. We will not count tardies the first week as we all adjust to the new procedures. After we begin our new arrival procedures, we will tweak or adjust as necessary if we need to extend arrival time in the mornings.
- All staff members will be required to check their temperatures once they arrive at school.
- We are committed to having additional staff members out front and back the first few weeks of school to ensure that the younger students (specifically K & 1) know exactly where to go upon arrival in the mornings.
- Buses will drop off in the back as usual and students will have to enter through the Kindergarten entrance due to the construction. There will be multiple staff members that will check the temperatures of students once they arrive at school. These staff members will then escort the bus riders that will be eating breakfast to the cafeteria and escort thye non-breakfast eating bus riders to the gym.
- All 1st, 2nd & 3rd Grade Parents will be asked to drop their students off at the front entrance until further notice. Only Kindergarten students will be allowed to be dropped at the back entrance after 7:35 AM. If a parent has multiple students in various grade levels, parents are asked to drop off both students at the entrance that their youngest student is assigned to. For example, a parent with a Kindergartener and 3rd grader will be asked to drop off both students at the Kindergarten back entrance because the Kindergartener is their youngest student. These changes have been made to reduce the traffic in the front and to ensure that each student’s temperature has been checked at Station A, B,or C.
- Our tentative plan is once construction of the back area is completed at the end of August, 2nd grade students will also be allowed to be dropped off at the back entrance after 7:35 AM. Dr. Cutter will notify parents when this change officially takes place.
- Multiple assigned staff members will check car rider student temperatures from 7:05-7:35 AM each morning. One temperature checking station will be located outside the entrance by the office (Temp Check Station A) and one will be located outside the entrance by the gym (Temp Check Station B). Students who are eating breakfast at school will go to Temp Check Station A and students who are NOT eating breakfast at school will go to Temp Check Station B. At 7:35 AM, a third temperature checking station (Temp Check Station C) will open up at the back drop off area for Kindergarten students.
- Walkers are allowed to walk to school with a parent guardian. If the student is accompanied by a parent, parents must drop their student off by either the corner sidewalk on Melrose Street in front of the Maryville City Schools Foundation building or by the fire hydrant in front of the MCS Clinic. This is to protect the safety of the students and ensure that there are limited interactions between students and adults.
Places for Students Between 7:05 - 7:35 AM
- The assigned staff in the cafeteria and the assigned staff in the gym will be joined by the designated morning duty staff member to monitor the students from 7:05-7:35 AM. Students will be released from the gym to go to their classrooms at 7:35 AM. A SPED or Specials teacher will arrive in the cafeteria to monitor any students not finished with breakfast
- Students in both the cafeteria and gym will sit in assigned seats with students from their Smokie Sidekick Groups. The Smokie Sidekick Groups will be spread out in each location to reduce interactions, certify CDC guidelines are being followed and ensure students are in groups of less than 50.
- Teachers will be at their doorway watching the hallways and welcoming students into classrooms, as well as directing students to use hand sanitizer
Clinic
- Should a student have a fever at Sam Houston above 100.4, the student will go to the back room of the clinic until a parent arrives to come pick them up. Should there be multiple students with fevers, the students will be spread out in the clinic or staff member will take them to the portable until a parent arrives to pick them up.
- Any student or staff member that is sent home with a fever must follow the MCS guidelines for readmission to school through the school’s health clinic. Dr. Winstead will be sharing a specific MCS Response Plan for Positive COVID-19 cases
- Teachers will be reminded to address low level nursing needs in the classroom. Teachers will be given classroom kits with Band-Aids, thermometers, q-tips with Vaseline, etc. This is being done to ensure that only students with fevers or COVID-19 symptoms visit the clinic.
- Nurses will be encouraged to take meds to the classroom to decrease student traffic in the clinic.
Dismissal
Overview
- Staff and students are encouraged to wear masks during dismissal
- Siblings will no longer be allowed to ride the bus to SHE, walk through the building and wait out front for parent pick up as in years past.
- Kindergarten and 1st grade bus riders will be escorted by their bus number and picked up from their classes and taken to the benches out back. 2nd and 3rd grade students will sit with their Sidekick Groups and their bus number in the 2nd grade hall.
- Car Rider students will be spread out on the covered benches out front and will wait to be called for buses and parent pick-up. Students will sit in their classes and next to their Smokie Sidekick Groups to reduce student interactions.
- There will be two lines of cars in the front and a cone system. Student names and their cone number will be called on the walkie talkies to let the student know that their parents have arrived. Once the students name and number has been called, they will go to the correct cone number where their parent/guardian will be to pick them up. The number system will ensure that student interactions with students outside their cohort will be reduced. Each parent will receive two car tags for their rearview mirrors.
- Students who are walking will be released during dismissal once their parent has arrived at the corner sidewalk on Melrose Street in front of the Maryville City Schools Foundation building or by the fire hydrant in front of the MCS Clinic. A staff member will notify the student(s) to meet the parent at the corner.
- The MHS student(s) who are picking up Sam Houston students and walking them to the high school will be arriving at 3:00 PM by the fire hydrant in front of the MCS Clinic on the corner of Melrose. Once the MHS student(s) arrives, a SHE staff member will walk the students to the corner of Melrose.
Other
- 2nd and 3rd grade Adventure Club students will be escorted to their designated area in the art room. K and 1st students will be escorted by an adventure club employee and picked up in their rooms when buses dismiss
Recess
- Each Smokie Sidekick Group will share recess time. Only two Smokie Sidekick Groups will be on the playground at one time and each Smokie Sidekick Group will go to a different area of the playground to ensure that there are limited interactions between the groups. The Master Schedule has been modified slightly to add a recess time to each grade level for one group of Smokie Sidekicks to use at an alternate time.
- Any outside water fountains will be closed
