Novato Unified School District Superintendent Weekly Update - October 30, 2020

Press release from the Novato Unified School District:

October 30, 2020

En español

Dear NUSD Family,

This week marked the beginning of NUSD’s return of children to our campuses. This is an exciting and important first step of getting all our students safely back to campus when the time and conditions are right.

Topics included in today’s letter are:

• Successful return to school for TK, K and Self-Contained Special Day Classes
• Safe trick or treating this weekend
• Phase 2 of NUSD’s reentry plan
• COVID Handbook for Students and Families
• New student registration opens on November 2 for the 2021-2022 school year and Kindergarten Information Night on December 9
• October 26, 2020 Virtual Town Hall

Successful return to school for TK/K

After more than 7 months, students returned to NUSD’s campuses this week. Our Transitional Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and self-contained Special Day Classes returned under Phase 1. I visited each elementary campus and it was great to see our students smiling as they were greeted by their teachers who were thrilled to finally welcome their students to their classrooms. Supporting our elementary campuses was an all hands-on deck effort that included our secondary administrative teams, each department, the district office administrative team and our Trustees. We could not have done it without our team’s tremendous support.

The students were incredibly well behaved, and parents followed the new rules for drop off and pick up, even though it was really hard not to get out of the car and walk their child in. We had strong systems in place to keep those in our care safe. We learned a lot in this first week about the logistics of returning our children to our campuses, with less than 60 students returning to the open campuses, and we will use this learning to better understand how we continue to scale our efforts up for the upcoming phases.

Safe trick or treating this weekend

As our Country continues to navigate the COVID pandemic, we realize more and more that the most recent COVID spread is coming from small gatherings and that these gatherings send ripples of COVID out through our communities. We hope that, as you develop your Halloween plans, you will keep this in mind. Here is a link to a document created by Marin County Public Health and Marin County Office of Education. I appreciate your reviewing it and planning for a safe Halloween.

Phase 2 of NUSD’s Reentry Plan

Phase 2 of NUSD’s reentry plan will begin on November 9 with our first and second grade students returning to campus for hybrid learning. Our schools are prepared for this return and all of the safety precautions in place for our TK and K classrooms will be in place for our first and second grade classrooms.

COVID Handbook for Students and Families

We continue to receive many questions about how we will handle specific situations. It is important to remember that we work closely with Marin County Public Health on these important topics. Together, we have developed the COVID Handbook for Students and Families and you can find the NUSD template here. This document includes a thorough overview, a parent/guardian community health pledge, site based COVID-19 contacts, preventative measures taken at school, health and hygiene practices, processes for parents to follow in specific situations, communications protocols for specific scenarios, and attendance policies. As the County moves through the tiers, the Handbook will be updated and reposted on the NUSD COVID page https://nusd.org/covid/. Please remember that keeping our community safe is each of our responsibilities.

New Student Registration opens on November 2 for the 2021-2022 School Year

Registration for new students for the next school year will open on Monday, November 2, 2020, and can be completed on SchoolMint. Information about registration can also be found here https://nusd.org/enroll/. Kindergarten and Transitional Kindergarten Information Night will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, December 9, at 5 pm. with Spanish interpretation. Details for participation will be available soon.

October 26, 2020 Virtual Town Hall

Thank you to those who were able to participate or watch the Virtual Town Hall last Monday afternoon. I addressed the common themes/questions along with Assistant Superintendents Yancy Hawkins and Amie Carter, and Marin County Nurses. Here is a link to a recording of the Virtual Town Hall and I link to the Thoughtexchange Report.

Thank you for all you are doing to keep our kids and community safe.

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.