Guidelines place health, safety first
The California Department of Education outlines what needs to be done to reopen schools
LANCASTER — The California Department of Education’s guidelines for the return to school this fall places health and safety first when considering whether to physically reopen schools campuses to students, teachers and other school staff amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“School reopening is a matter that is decided locally,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said Monday during a Zoom press conference. “With 1,000 school districts in our state, all of our schools make their own decision about when they might open according to their own calendar. But recognizing that schools will need to open in a COVID-impacted era, we have worked to provide some guidance to our districts on the kind of things they should do and could do to accommodate our students being back on campus in a way that makes them safe.”
Titled “Stronger Together: A Guidebook for the Safer Opening of California’s Public Schools,” the 53-page document follows the California Department of Public Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended guidelines.
School campuses closed March 16 to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and did not reopen for the remainder of the academic year. Instruction continued via distance learning.
The CDE guidance recommends taking student and staff temperatures as they arrive on campus to prevent the further spread of the COVID-19. It also recommended all students and school staff wear face coverings or face shields and maintain six feet of physical distance during school activities. The same recommendations apply to students while on buses.
Thurmond said districts will have to focus on how they arrange students and staff differently in terms of scheduling, to ensure smaller class sizes for students.
Some districts might continue distance learning or adopt a hybrid model that blends in-class instruction with distance learning.
For student physical
distancing, the recommendations include limiting the number of students psychically reporting to school, virtual activities instead of field trips and intergroup events and signage and barriers to direct traffic around campus.
For school buses, the recommendation is to determine the maximum capacity for students of each vehicle while meeting six-foot physical distancing objectives.
Physical education and intramural/interscholastic athletics should be limited to activities that do not involve physical contact with other students or equipment, until advised otherwise by state/local public health officials, the document said.
Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools
Debra Duardo said the state’s guidebook contains many of the same considerations included in the 43page Los Angeles County framework released on May 27.
“Both sets of guidelines recognize that the health and safety of students, staff and families must always come first,” she said. “They are built on the directives of public health authorities and are subject to change as the health crisis evolves. Education leaders must ensure that schools reopen with a focus on safety, well-being and continuity of learning according to the needs of their diverse communities. While it is enormously challenging to implement physical distancing in schools, we must make it work given our charge to protect the state’s most precious resource — our children.”