Novato Unified School District Superintendent Update & Schedules

Press release from the Novato Unified School District:

October 16, 2020

En español

Dear NUSD Family,

NUSD Staff continues to diligently prepare our campuses for the return of our Transitional Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and self-contained special day class students on October 26, 2020. I will highlight some of our efforts and will also discuss other topics. Topics included in today’s letter are:

• Elementary school instructional days and bell schedules
• Elementary Cohorts
• Secondary school instructional days and bell schedules
• Online daily student health screenings
• School specific information regarding returning students to campus
• An upcoming Virtual Town Hall

School instructional days and bell schedules

When we last rolled out information about the elementary instructional days and bell schedule, we received a lot of feedback about the plan. After receiving Board approval on the reentry plan on October 6, we went to work on improving the instructional days and bell schedule. The elementary reentry schedule committee met twice this week to provide feedback to the elementary principals and the NUSD Education Services team. Based upon this feedback, the teams developed these revised schedules which will begin for those elementary students returning to hybrid learning on October 26 (Transition Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and self-contained special day classes). In case you need a reminder, you can get additional information about the re-entry timing here.

Please find the following bell schedules:

• Revised Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten instructional day and bell schedule for here. This is a cohort-based model and you can find additional information on cohorts in the section below the bell schedules. As you can see in the schedule, all students will be dismissed from school by 12:05 pm on those days when they will be on campus. Students who would like to pick up a school lunch can do so at dismissal time.
• Revised Grade 1-5 instructional day and bell schedule elementary here. This is also a cohort-based model and you can see additional information on cohorts below the bell schedules and students will be dismissed prior to lunch time at 12:25 pm. Those students who would like to pick up a school lunch can do so at dismissal time.
• Bell schedules for early intervention and elementary special day classes, and social cognition classes can be found here.

Elementary Cohorts

Our NUSD families returning to on campus learning on October 26 will be informed of their child’s cohort placement on Monday, October 19. Families of students in grades 1-5 will be notified as soon as possible and siblings will be kept on the same schedule. Teachers and administrators had to consider several factors when determining the cohort placements of students in order to create balanced groups and we will not be able to honor individual requests. Thank you for your understanding and support.

Online daily student health screenings

As part of our ongoing efforts to keep our schools and community safe, NUSD has partnered with CrisisGo to support daily student health screenings as they return to campus. This application is very easy to use and is currently being used successfully by the Miller Creek School District.

Families will receive a unique email each morning that needs to be completed before the child goes to school. A parent or guardian will need to click on the link embedded in the email and answer a question regarding their child’s health status. Assuming that the child is healthy and has not had any confirmed COVID exposures, the child will be permitted to go to class.

If the child’s family does not answer the questions prior to their arrival at school, the child will not be allowed to enter the classroom until the parent is contacted and verification of the student’s good health and lack of exposure is confirmed. If the answers indicate that the child is unhealthy or has had a confirmed COVID exposure, then the school will follow up with the family to better understand the circumstances and the child will not be allowed to enter the classroom until cleared.

Parent responses will be forwarded to the child’s teacher and the school office staff. Again, this process will need to be completed each day a child is scheduled to participate in on campus learning. More information will be provided to families by Tuesday, October 20.

Secondary school instructional days and bell schedules

Beginning next week. a balanced team of stakeholders will meet to review feedback about the middle school bell schedule. This committee will give guidance to the middle school principals and the NUSD Education Services team which will then finalize the schedules and share them with the community. It is expected that these schedules will be released by November 6 at the latest.

Subsequently, a balanced team of stakeholders will reconvene to give guidance on the high school schedules on or around the beginning of November. The high school administrative teams will finalize the high school schedules and it is expected that these schedules will be released in early December at the latest.

School specific information regarding returning students to campus

Principals are working with their teams to develop school specific information for parents to better understand how the campus will look and what to expect upon a return to school. This information will be rolled out during the week prior to students returning to their campuses. If you have elementary students, you can expect information about this from your school very shortly. High school and middle schools will roll out the information in the weeks to come.

An upcoming Virtual Town Hall

On Thursday, October 22, 2020, at 5 pm I will be hosting a Virtual Town Hall to address common thoughts and questions about returning to a hybrid learning model. This will be held on Facebook Live with a link that does not require a Facebook account http://bit.ly/Oct22TownHall. It will be recorded and shared after the event if you were unable to participate live. I will share a link to the recording in next week’s end of week communication.

We are launching a Thoughexchange to collect your thoughts and questions and will address the themes of the feedback in the Virtual Town Hall. To share your perspectives, you can click here https://my.thoughtexchange.com/738820702. This link will be open until Wednesday, October 21, 2020, at 5:00 pm.

Accompanying me in this Virtual Town Hall will be Assistant Superintendents Yancy Hawkins and Amie Carter. The vast majority of our time in the town hall will be discussing the key themes from the Thoughtexchange. We will also monitor the chat during the session and will do our best to address the themes that emerge during the Town Hall. I appreciate your understanding that we will not be able to answer all questions that appear in the monitored chat.

I appreciate all you are doing during this terribly difficult time. We can get through anything – Together.

Sincerely,

Kris Cosca

www.nusd.org/COVID

This press release was produced by the Novato Unified School District. The views expressed here are the author’s own.