Montezuma-Cortez School District issued the following announcement on June 8.
Dear Families and Community,
I hope your summer is providing some needed time for relaxation and family time together. We appreciated everyone's support with our temporary online learning that we offered this spring in response to the Governor's order to close our school buildings. I applaud our teachers' efforts to providing ongoing instruction and support to students and families and I am grateful to our families for the level of support they provided to students at home to support this online learning. I also speak for all our staff in saying that we missed seeing our students every day and being together in an in-person learning environment.
I know many of you are wondering what school will look like in the Fall. Our team has been working diligently to plan for next year and our priority is to welcome students and teachers back to school for in-person learning in a safe and healthy way. We are in ongoing communication with the Colorado Department of Education and the Governor's Office to better understand what those safety guidelines might be and how we can best implement them locally in partnership with our Montezuma County Department of Public Health. At this time based on a meeting with the Governor, we believe we will be able to welcome our students and teachers back to school safely in the Fall, but we are still working on the plans to do that safely. These health and safety measures will probably include things like daily health screenings for staff and students, enhanced cleaning, enhanced hygiene, and changes to scheduling to create student learning groups that will do the majority of their learning together in smaller groups to limit the chances of the spread of the virus between groups. We are also working on back-up plans in case our community experiences a significant outbreak of COVID. These back-up plans would likely include a blend of in-person and online learning or short periods of school closure supported by online learning.
I know that there may also be some families who may wish to enroll their students in a fully online learning option for a variety of reasons. The district is also planning to offer a fully online schooling option for families that would choose this opportunity. This will be different than the spring temporary online learning and will be a full-year enrollment option.
The Board of Education and I are committed to providing a safe, healthy, and engaging education to all of our students this Fall. As we continue our planning based on the guidance from the state and our local health department, we also want to ensure we are communicating with the community regarding our planning process and hearing from teachers, families, and students. We conducted several surveys this spring and are using that feedback from teachers, families, and students to inform our planning. We will also be having a board work session on June 16th to discuss our Fall back-to-school plans and our budget in light of anticipated state budget cuts to education. We are also planning for several online town halls to share more information on our planning with the community, to answer questions, and hear feedback. We will be communicating more information on those dates and times soon. All meetings and links to the online format will be posted on our Facebook and website and I would like to personally invite you to join our online board meetings and our upcoming town halls. We are stronger together and we appreciate the ongoing community support of our students and schools.
Thank you again,
Lori Haukeness
Original source can be found here.
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