School opening update
HARMONY SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY
Dear HST Students, Parents and Teachers;
When the COVID-19 pandemic first began in our state last spring, we promised our Harmony community that our response to the pandemic would always be focused on keeping our entire Harmony community safe, and our students focused on learning. As a school system that places a heavy emphasis on science and math, we also promised that all of our decisions would be based on the best science and data available.
Today, we wanted to share with you an important update about the reopening of your child’s school. Just as importantly, though, we wanted to share with you more detailed information about how that determination was made and what specifics steps toward reopening will happen next.
From the beginning of the pandemic, Harmony has looked at a specific group of informed and reliable data sources to determine the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in our local community. These sources are the Harvard University Data Center, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Department of State Health Services, our city and county health agencies, and information from our neighboring school systems.
From this data, Harmony Public Schools has developed a four-stage reopening plan for its 58 campuses across Texas that allows the specific COVID-10 conditions in each community to determine each school’s individual reopening plan.
Those stages are:
Our campus is currently Stage #1 and will begin Stage #4 on October 12th, 2020.
In short, Stage #1 means;
In short, Stage #1 means; Campuses must remain closed for both students and staff for the time being due to a high presence of COVID-19 in our community. However, in the next stage, Stage 2, it may be safe to host a limited number of students in Harmony Learning Centers. In these Learning Centers, students would complete their daily classwork remotely from a Harmony facility in a supervised, day-long “study hall”-like setting.
Stage #4 means;
Stage #4 means; Campuses are open for in-person learning for all students whose parents opted for on-campus learning. Students and staff members would be required to follow all safety protocols outlined in the Harmony Public Schools Back to School Playbook, as well as any others deemed necessary for safe, productive learning.
Our ultimate goal is to reopen our campus for all students who opted into in-person learning (Stage 4) as soon as conditions are favorable.
Our goal for Stage 4 is October 12th, dependent on local COVID-19 conditions and TEA guidelines.
- Stage 2 starts on September 14th, 2020. Mostly distance learning with limited in-person students in a learning center setting
- Stage 3 starts on October 5th, 2020. In-Person instruction with targeted groups (students who have chronic absenteeism and staff kids)
- Staff returns on October 5th, 2020
Stage 4 starts on October 12th,2020. Students who chose in person learning will start to come to campus