The current number and the daily numbers in Stearns County have overall been trending downward since the peak in late November. The number this week is 154.76. I started out the Incident Command team with “although the numbers continue to trend downward, we are not out of the woods yet....” Even with the Governor’s order that will allow us to bring students back into our buildings, we need to remain vigilant on all levels of mitigation.
Once again as you look at our numbers within our buildings this week, we continue to stay at a very low level. You can see these numbers in the chart below. We need to continue doing everything we possibly can to keep these numbers low to keep our students in school and create a safe environment for our staff and students.
With the Governor’s orders that I referenced earlier, all schools in Minnesota will be able to bring their K-5 grades back into the buildings by January 18th. However, as you know we have had our K-5 students in the hybrid learning model since early October and have never gone to Distance Learning. Because our elementary school has not been in distance learning we will be able to move our back to school program up a week. We can only do this by first receiving approval from our Regional Support team, which they did, at our December 16th meeting. Below is our schedule for bringing students back in the building.
Week 1: January 4 - 8
Remain in hybrid in Grades PreK-5 and distance learning in Grade 6-12
January 8 will be a C-Day for K-12
Week 2: January 11 - 15
Remain in hybrid in Grades PreK-5 and distance learning in Grades 6-12
No School PreK-12 on January 15. This will be a transition day.
Week 3: January 18 - 22
January 18, shift to in-person in PreK-5, Grades 6-12 will start in hybrid.
January 22 will be a C-Day for K-12
Week 4: January 25-29
No School PreK-12 - January 25, Teacher Workshop Day
Normal schedule on January 26 - 29 with PreK-5 in-person and Grades 6 - 12 in hybrid.
No C-Day this week.
Future Phase after January 29:
Shift to all in-person PreK-12 when the metrics and current local analytics allow all students to come back safely. More information will be sent out in mid-January on any further changes to the calendar.
We will also continue our C-Days every Friday in January except where noted in the schedule above. You will note as you look at the school calendar that we have a workshop day scheduled for January 22. At the School Board meeting on December 21, 2020 the school board will decide if we will move the workshop from January 22 to January 25. This will allow January 22 to become a C-Day.
Any updates for the holiday break will just be an update in numbers. Please look for these updates as you always have on our website, next week’s numbers will not be updated until Wednesday (12/30).
I would also like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year! Please continue to make good decisions to keep you and your families safe and our students in school.
If you have any questions or concerns do not hesitate to contact me or any of the building principals.
Greg Winter, Superintendent: gwinter@isd740.org
Chad Doetkott, High School Principal cdoetkott@isd740.org
Robert Anderson, Middle School Principal randerson@isd740.org
Terryl Pearson, Elementary School Principal tpearson@isd740.org