As we shared in a January Community Update, all Vista Unified Schools will be adjusting the school calendar to include two non-student days in the spring months. This will not impact the end date of the school calendar for students, which is June 8th. These days are opportunities for our teachers and staff to have access to new professional development and training to support students academically, socially/emotionally, and behaviorally. The updated 2021-2022 school calendar will be presented to the board for discussion and approval at the February 24th Board meeting, and to provide our families with as much notice as possible, we wanted to share the recommendation for the first non-student day, which is scheduled for Wednesday, March 9th. Once the calendar is approved, we will publish it on the district website and communicate the date for the second non-student day, which will occur in April or May.

In addition to seeing shorter lines at our COVID-19 testing clinics, we are definitely having fewer COVID-19 cases reported in our schools. This downward trend is also being reported throughout our county as COVID-19 case numbers appear to be slowing down. During the last week of January, our district reported daily COVID-19 cases as high as 162 in a single day. Just this past week, daily cases averaged around 50 cases per day. We remain committed to serving our community, and, with your help, our schools will remain open and safe for learning.

With our school procedure shifting to Group Tracing, we understand that receiving a group notification letter and testing an exposed student can be challenging. We have developed a plan to help. We are excited to announce that weekly COVID testing is coming to your student's school. If your student participates, they will be tested once a week and will no longer have to test each time they are exposed at school.

This is not a requirement but a service we are providing to help simplify the testing process for your family. Starting February 7th, Inspire Diagnostics will be visiting our school every week to conduct PCR tests on students signed up for our weekly testing program. The test results will be sent directly to you, the parent. Please call the school with any positive result.

If you are interested in participating, please complete the form below and pre-register with Inspire Diagnostics (InspireDiagnostics.com/vista-unified-school-district). Only students who are pre-registered with Inspire and who are signed up using the link below will be tested. If you have already registered with Inspire Diagnostics at a district testing site, you do not need to register again.

To complete the online form, go to Parent Permission for Student COVID-19 Testing.

A group of stakeholders called the Guiding Coalition have come together to help us create a Strategic Plan for the future of Vista Unified. The Guiding Coalition is composed of students, staff, families, community members, and university partners. Our Guiding Coalition is about to embark on their next collaborative event, The Messy Middle, on February 11th and 12th. It is important that we have community feedback and update you on our next steps. In order to do this, we have created a video to guide you through this process and direct you to our website, where you can share your voice and follow us on our journey.