While we understand that many of you have concerns, we appreciate your patience. We are doing our best to ensure the safety of the entire Gator Family, students and employees, while continuing to provide a great education for our students. These are very daunting tasks for which there are no precedents. We are constantly receiving updates that must be followed and, with each new bit of information, comes many questions that must be considered. We would like to encourage each of you to contact the school during business hours for answers to your questions, as the Facebook page is not always monitored.
To address a few questions…
· We know that it will not be possible to have all students, faculty and staff on campus at the same time in the near future (Traditional Model). Group size restrictions, social distance requirements and physical classroom size will determine what school will look like in August and knowing how many parents want to send their children to us is essential for us to begin to plan. The Google form that each of you was asked to complete was designed to give us the needed information that will allow us to schedule students with as much face-to-face time with faculty and staff as possible.
· Students in K-2 were not addressed at this time because we are hoping to be able to offer more campus time for the building of foundational skills in our younger students. Again, this can only be accomplished by having a firm understanding of how many students plan to be on campus. Please understand that we are trying to do what is best for all of our students and know that we will face many unique situations. We will deal with these on an individual basis as they arise.
· Plans will be finalized after the Louisiana Department of Health releases guidance for Fall 2020 K-12 Schools and the governor’s late July announcement regarding whether Louisiana will stay in Phase 2 or enter Phase 3. We are preparing for all models in order to enable us to transition from phase to phase as this may happen quickly in the 2020-21 school year.
o Traditional Model - Face-to-face classes with limited capacity when and where necessary; sanitation procedures following CDC and Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) guidelines
o Hybrid Model - Face-to-face classes on alternate days; virtual lessons during off-site days; sanitation procedures following CDC and Louisiana Department of Health guidelines. DCS will most likely follow a schedule that allows students to attend face-to-face classes 2 days per week and virtual classes 3 days per week.
o Virtual Model - Virtual classes following an established schedule, with no face-to-face classes
o We will most likely begin with the Hybrid Model or the Virtual Model and are considering bringing students in small groups for Chromebook assignments and preliminary screenings. (Again, the Traditional Model is not allowable under current restrictions.)
· A preliminary school calendar will be posted tomorrow. We do know that the first day for students to be on campus will be August 3 but we still do not know who those students will be or what the weekly schedules will look like. (Again, this will be guided by the number of students that plan to attend class on campus.)
Again, this is all a work in progress and we know that we face many more hurdles as we plan. We are doing our best to try to foresee potential conflicts, but that is not always possible. Again, we appreciate your patience and understanding and encourage you to reach out to us with questions by calling or emailing the school during business hours.
Additional Guidance can be found at the below link:
https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/strong-start-2020/school-reopening-guidelines-and-resources.pdf