Sequoia Union High School District
Spring 2021 Plan
December 2020
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December 2020title
Reopening Plan
Given the COVID-19 pandemic's current fluidity, SUHSD has decided to begin the Spring semester under our current Distance Learning Model. Although we will remain in that model, we have submitted our Reopening Plan to the San Mateo County Office of Education to prepare for an eventual re-opening of our schools for in-person instruction. The plan submitted is required by the County Office of Education in collaboration with San Mateo County Health for districts to incrementally open for in-person instruction for all tier colors, except for purple. As a reminder, the plan requires the district to address the following:
- Cleaning & Disinfection
- Cohorting, Entrance & Egress
- Face Coverings
- Health Screenings
- Hygiene Practices
- Contact Tracing
- Physical Distancing
- Staff & Family Education
- COVID Testing Staff/Students
- Triggers for Transitioning to Distance Learning
- Communication Plan
The Sequoia Union High School District is the first public high school district in San Mateo County to submit a plan for county-level review. The plan is a working document and will be updated and amended as we are able to further define key components of instruction and health and safety measures.
School Operations
The Board of Trustees with district and site-wide leadership met on December 9th to discuss school site operations, second-semester learning models, and the parent survey results. Challenges were shared by staff and possible solutions were discussed. If you were unable to attend, we have included a summary presentation for you to review.
School Readiness Dashboard
The School Readiness Dashboard is also available on our website, to view, please visit our Dashboard webpage.
November 2020
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November 2020title
Given the complexity of the plan and the need for openness and transparency, one of our immediate goals is to provide our families with a dashboard that will share and track the progress of each of the elements listed below as well as allow parents and students to monitor when a requirement is met. The completion of these requirements are prerequisites for our reopening plan. Here is our current status:
Academic Experience
- Quality and Rigorous Instruction: We are analyzing students’ grades and the additional support needed for equitable and accessible instruction.
- Effective Simultaneous In-Person and Virtual Instruction: We are creating mock-up classrooms to demonstrate this model.
- Modification of Teaching Environment: We are collaborating with teachers on how to best support students and this new academic experience.
Facility Requirements
- Student Capacity per Site: We are building a new scheduling model, based on both health protocols and staff input, to determine the appropriate student capacity at each school.
- Classroom Capacity: We have determined that, with social distancing requirements, our classrooms can hold an average of 10-12 students.
- Modifying Entrances, Egresses, and Movement Patterns: We are currently testing new patterns with our existing smaller cohort in anticipation of a larger scale-up.
Health Protocols
- Physical Distancing: All sites have been audited to determine capacity, and social distancing decals and signage have been placed throughout our campuses and office.
- Student/Staff Health Screening and Testing: All sites currently have a daily screening protocol for all students and staff, and we are finalizing a testing protocol for employees.
- Contact Tracing: We are currently testing tracing protocols with our existing smaller cohort, however our experience so far has indicated that there is significant staff time required to execute the protocol properly and hence school sites may require additional resources to do this at scale.
Other Elements
- Staff/Family Education on Enforcement: We are currently testing enforcement protocols and health and safety education with our existing smaller cohort in academic, athletic, extracurricular, and other settings.
- Triggers for Transition back to Distance Learning: We will be following the Pandemic Recovery Framework from the San Mateo County Office of Education that outlines certain actions, up to and including a site shutdown, if the level of confirmed cases reaches certain rates within a school community.