June 7, 2020

On May 17 in response to school reopening guidance from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I reported that we plan to reopen schools on August 10, as scheduled (see the entire 2020-21 school calendar here). In that message I also reported that Alvord would be participating in the Riverside County Department of Education (RCOE) Reopening Schools Task Force. That Task Force completed their work this past Thursday. They announced plans to provide guidance based on the Task Force recommendations to school districts on June 19.

The California Department of Education has also announced it will release official guidance to schools on Monday, June 8. The guidance document is entitled, A Guidebook for the Safe Reopening of California’s Public Schools. In a preview last week from Tony Thurmond, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the guidance document will include the following recommendations:

• Face coverings: Students and staff should wear face coverings during all educational activities (at school or on a bus).
• Physical distancing: Students and staff should engage in physical distancing (at least six feet of spacing between seats and in hallways and on buses) at all times.
• Symptom screening: School districts should identify staff who can take temperatures for students and staff before they enter the campus.

Like all school reopening guidance documents, the recommendations offered are considered in the context of local conditions. All districts are tasked with designing high-quality and equitable instructional practices for all learners while arranging students and staff in the many new ways that will be needed in order to facilitate physical distancing guidelines. These are the primary challenges school districts face as they prepare for 2020-21.

Our own Task Force (Read my May 24 message for Task Force details) has already been hard at work discussing these challenges. Rest assured that when we reopen our doors on August 10, as currently scheduled, it will be because we are confident that we are prepared to provide educational and support services in ways that will satisfy local and state safety requirements, ensure a high-quality instructional and student-services program, and support our families that need their children in school. We can all agree that children can best be served in the safe confines of a school campus. That’s our goal. Reopen safely.

Practically every school district is considering the same three reopening possibilities: traditional schooling, distance learning, or a hybrid of the two, all contingent on local conditions related to COVID-19. To help us plan we are administering a survey to our families. Please complete the brief survey and provide us with your plans when school resumes on August 10. Click on the image below to choose the English or Spanish version of the survey and complete it today.