District Communications

July 17, 2020

Dear WSD Families,

Summer break is usually a chance to take a break from the responsibilities and routines of the school year, but this summer is obviously heavily weighed down by our uncertainty about the reopening of school. I recognize that you and your children need to know how to plan for school this August and what to expect. We are working hard to figure this out, together. Our WSD Reopening School Steering Committee, JFK Team and WMHS Team have been meeting frequently to work on the WSD Reopening Plan.

Please know that the #1 stated Purpose of our Reopening Plan is to “Safely reopen WSD schools for all students, staff and families” and the #1 stated Guiding Belief is “Student and staff health, safety, and wellbeing first for ALL”.

Our WSD Reopening School Steering Committee is led by myself and COVID-19 Co-Coordinators/School Nurses Liz Parris and Katharine Monje. Our steering committee is composed of four teams. Each team is meeting independently and as a whole committee, as well as coordinating with school-level teams. The four teams and their responsibilities are as follows:

• The Continuity of Learning team is charged with creating in-person, hybrid & remote learning models and systems to support the social and emotional needs of students. Their goal is to be fully prepared for shifting health scenarios prior to the development of a vaccine.
• The Health and Safety team is responsible for developing universal precautions, daily health screenings for all students and staff, exclusion/inclusion policies (when and why students would not be allowed to come to school due to risk of posible contagion), how to best serve students with special health needs, proper protocol for cleaning and disinfecting the building, how to quickly respond to a positive case, and contact tracing procedures. 
• The Operations team is working on a plan for providing student meals during in-person learning and remote learning, safety protocols for student transportation, higher-risk staff procedures, and emergency procedures. Their team is also working with an engineer to improve building air quality and create an isolation space for students who experience symptoms at school using Center for Disease Control guidelines. 
• The Communications team is committed to delivering regular, timely, accessible and compassionate communications with students, families, community, and staff with clarity around health data, learning models and other school operations (meals and material distribution, etc). The team is working closely with WSD’s home/school liaisons on a plan to communicate with our English Language Learning families. The team is planning how to best coordinate with local health officials to communicate dismissal decisions and possible COVID-19 exposure. In case of exposure, communication to the school community will align with the school’s emergency operations plan. Messaging must counter potential stigma and maintain confidentiality of the student or staff member as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.

Family Survey

Our Family Survey (which was sent out on 7/7/20) has been completed by 162 families. That is approximately 55% of our families. If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so now. 

In the survey, we ask about comfort levels with our hybrid-learning model and in-person learning model. In the charts below, 1 is “Not comfortable at all” and 5 is “Very comfortable”.

There were many thoughtful responses to our question, “Are there any specific measures the WSD can take to increase your comfort level with the Hybrid Learning model?” Here are a few examples:

• More interaction with teachers to make sure my child is up to date with schoolwork.

• Having the same day schedule for both my children.

• I would like to make sure that remote options for younger kids will not be too burdensome. We want school to be functional and promote learning, but mostly promote LOVE of learning.

• My comfort level would be increased if on the remote days, the focus was on connecting students, movement, and creative ways to incorporate tech (scavenger hunts, project based learning, etc.) with very limited time spent on instruction or having kids sit sedentary on devices. We as adults cannot handle hours of virtual meetings and our kids should not be expected to do so either.

• I assume daily temp and symptom checks for every body entering the building, required return home on check failure, masks, social distancing, redundant hand washing, a plan in place for uncooperative students and families, and a plan in place for the potential outbreak. I think with care this might be doable, esp. if we are prepared to increase precautions when they become necessary. If any of these are not part of the plan, those would be the measures to increase my comfort level.

Thank you for your incredibly valuable feedback! Your continued support in this process is critical to our success as a district. We need your continued input on reopening school. To gather your feedback, we’re using a tool called Thoughtexchange. All of our voices matter, so your participation is crucial and valued.

Click here to participate:  https://my.thoughtexchange.com/809360299

You’ll be asked to respond to one open-ended question, consider and assign stars to some of the ideas shared by others, and learn what’s important to our community.

Winooski School District Community Forum on Reopening Schools

All families, staff and community members are invited to attend our online forum for a presentation of our Reopening Plan progress and to ask questions and get answers from our Leadership Team. The community forum will be held on Thursday, July 23 from 5pm-6:30pm via Zoom. We are working closely with our home/school liaisons to develop the best way to offer this information session to our newcomer families. Join the meeting by clicking https://wsdvt.zoom.us/j/93667104871 or by calling: +19294362866,,93667104871# US (New York)

Some additional updates:

District Updates

• Sadly, due to health and safety concerns, our annual WSD Back-to-School BBQ in August has been cancelled.
• If you’ve driven by our campus recently, you have noticed that our Capital Project construction is fully underway! Read more about our construction updates in the August WSD newsletter
• Speaking of our WSD newsletter, if you haven’t seen it already, you can catch up on our end of year celebrations, and read about some of our racial justice work in our July issue.

JFK Elementary Updates

WSD has half-day early releases during our school year for parent-teacher conferences and professional development for our staff. In years past, JFK has offered half-day release activities for our students. We have utilized our support staff to support our students during these activities.

As with most things for the 2020-21 school year, we have had to examine our practices and how they align with the COVID19 guidelines. One of the guidelines is that we keep students in “pods” so that they interact with the same students and adults during their time in school. This practice means that our early release activities will not be able to take place during the 2020-21 school year. The need to maintain the integrity of groups with students and adults means that we would have to have at least 23 different groups running, and the staff to support those groupings. 

Not being able to run the early release activities means that our support staff will be able to participate in the professional development that happens at JFK during the early release days. As a school, we value the work that our support staff does and the difference they make with our students. As we continue to learn and grow around important districtwide efforts such as our equity and anti-racist work, it is vital that all our staff have access to professional learning. 

For families, this means that students will need to be picked up on time for each of the early release days. Please consult the school calendar, and the JFK handbook when you get it, to find the days and times for our early dismissals.

As always, please connect with us if you have any questions or concerns. 

Thank you,

Sean McMannon, WSD Superintendent