State eyes fall class plans
Schools may require temperature checks, add mix of online courses
The Colorado Department of Education released new guidance Tuesday to help school districts prepare to reopen for the fall semester amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, but stopped short of confirming in-person classes will happen.
“Our goal… is to start in-person learning this fall, but we really need to see how the data progresses,” said Dr. Katy Anthes, Colorado’s commissioner of education, during a virtual news conference. “This toolkit is meant to provide contingencies and options for whatever happens.”
According to state officials’ recommendations, schools may have to intermittently leverage remote learning, stagger student schedules and conduct health screenings to ensure students and staff can safely partake in classes.
The Department of Education looked at approaches by other countries and collaborated with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and local superintendents to draft the guidelines, which Anthes called a work in progress. Regulators are looking for feedback, which the public can submit online.
“Undoubtedly, we know that school will look different this coming year,” said Anthes. “There will be a whole new set of rules and protocols that schools will need to put in place to minimize the spread of COVID-19.”
The guidelines cover a range of issues, including how to safely reopen a facility, how to deal with a positive case of COVID-19 and how to properly disinfect shared spaces and supplies. Both public and private schools will be required to follow health and safety precautions spelled out through Gov. Jared Polis’s executive orders. Those include mandating educators to wear face masks and screening students’ and staff members’ temperatures upon arrival to school, among other requirements.
The Department of Education also noted that in-person learning may be disrupted by an outbreak or executive order, and proposed options for a mix of onsite and remote education.
Leaders at Jeffco Public Schools already are planning a blended approach for the 20202021 school year. The district’s recently released plan calls for a scheduled rotation of in-person and remote learning to avoid hav
ing too many people in each school at once. Superintendent Jason Glass told The Denver Post he expects social distancing guidelines to persist into the fall, so he’s proposed “A” and “B” days or weeks during which students would trade time spent learning from home with time in a classroom.
Other districts, such as Cherry Creek School District, are debating a similar rotation, superintendent Scott Siegfried told the Aurora Sentinel. Even the University of Colorado, which unveiled its plan for the fall 2020 semester Tuesday, is proposing small, in-person classes until Thanksgiving and online learning thereafter to lower the risk of students carrying the virus back to campus after going home for the holiday.
All of this, however, is subject to change over the coming months should the circumstances around COVID-19 change, Anthes said.
“This is an evolving situation with the virus still being active in our community,” she said. “So the school year will be affected by public health orders, the COVID-19 incident rates of new cases and any progress our medical community makes on treatment.”