CCSD announces plan to return to in-person learning

The Alps Road Elementary School is displayed on Jan. 5. The Clarke County School District explained it’s procedures for returning all schools to in-person learning at a Feb. 4 Board of Education work session. “I as well as our cabinet all are very committed to returning students to school, and we continue to meet daily with our team to address potential barriers. We are particularly committed to our students with special needs and our high school students who have not had the opportunity to attend school since we got out last March, ” CCSD Superintendent Xernona Thomas said at the work session. Photo by Elena Webber

At a Feb. 4 Board of Education work session, the Clarke County School District detailed their plans to return all students to in-person learning.

The plan is made up of four phases which form a schedule for how each grade level will return to in-person learning over the next two months. A virtual learning option will remain available for the remainder of the school year.

“Before we can get to a five-day return, we have created an instructional model that supports a return for our students,” CCSD Chief Academic Officer Brannon Gaskins said at the work session.

CCSD’s reopening plan is displayed. This plan will be followed for the remainder of the school year unless certain conditions for a full reopening are met. Photo courtesy of Clarke County School District.

According to the plan, special needs students will return first on Feb. 15 for 2-4 days per week, with the number of in-person days gradually increasing. On March 1, special needs, Early Learning Center and pre-K-2 students will return for four in-person days a week, with Wednesday being an online learning day.

Students in grades 3-5 will return on March 15 for four in-person days a week, along with high school students.

While most grade levels will return all at once, high school students will return under a unique model due to their large student populations.

“Our high school leaders are planning on a phased-in process, where they will split students into different cohorts, and that cohort might start one day for week, increase to two days per week, until they are at four days per week and then five days per week,” Gaskins said at the work session. “We are still working on that information, because we will have to allow our high school students to register for either in-person instruction or virtual instruction.”

Due to transportation capacity concerns, the high schools will also be moving to a shorter schedule.

“Our high schools will have a reduced school schedule, it will be from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.,” Gaskins said. “We have been hit very hard in our transportation department as it relates to COVID-19, and the only way we could bring all three groups back is by having a reduced schedule for our high school students.”

On March 22, students in grades 6-8 will return under the same model as the younger and special needs students.

Alternatively, a virtual option will remain available for all students for the rest of the year in order to accommodate students and families that do not want to resume in-person learning.

“We will still provide a virtual option to families for the remainder of the year, so if families are still anxious about returning their students to in-person, they will still have the virtual option,” Gaskins said at the work session.

Parents who have not already registered for their preferred model will be able to do so until Feb. 11.

“The reopening registration that our parents did in January, we will reopen that registration. We will reopen that registration on Monday, and then it will close on Friday,” Gaskins said at the work session. “Principals will also engage parents at the conference day around their registration if they have not elected one.”

CCSD will adhere to this plan for the remainder of the school year unless one of two conditions for full in-person return are met. The first of these conditions will be teacher vaccination.

“We want to be able to return to a full, five-day return before the end of the year, and we feel there are two pathways in which to do that. One is from having our staff vaccinated, and once that vaccine is available to our staff we have already started on plans to vaccinate them and return back as soon as possible,” Gaskins said at the work session.

The other condition for a full return is a drastic decline in current COVID-19 metrics in the Athens-Clarke County area.

“The other is a decrease in the (COVID-19) positivity rate. So as we wait on staff vaccinations, there’s also an opportunity that our numbers will continue to decline, if there’s a positivity rate below five percent or less than 200 per hundred thousand, we may also see a full five-day return in that scenario,” Gaskins said at the work session.

The CCSD will also be implementing new COVID-19 mitigation measures.

“We’re going to provide the vaccine to all staff that want it, we will have smaller numbers of students and staff in building for an extended amount of time, in our previous reopening we brought back everyone back at the same time, in this new model we will have half the number of staff and students for at least two weeks,” Gaskins said at the work session. “Wednesday will be designated as a cleaning day and an opportunity to conduct contact tracing if necessary.”

In addition to those two measures, the district will also provide other means of protection along with COVID-19 testing to teachers and students.

“COVID testing (will be available) for symptomatic students in a planned partnership with the University of Georgia, and then we are going to provide additional face shields for all staff,” Gaskins said. “We have already provided face masks, we have also ordered five thousand face shields so staff will have face shields and face masks to use in their classrooms.”

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