My notes from Park City School Board meeting on reopening schools

If you have kids in Park City schools, you’ve probably been following the school reopening plans. School will go on — on August 20th. It sounds like schools will continue throughout the year over hell and high water. You have two options, in-person and online.

In-person will be a corona-ized version of what we are used to. Online will be taught by PCSD teachers. Buses will run on their normal routes. Before I get into thoughts on reopening, here is my bullet-point list of items I sent to a friend as meetings were going on.

• They are going to wash their hands a lot. Studies show that is important.
• They will send home a magnet that tells people how they should check their kids for symptoms every day.
• Every kid gets two CC, double-layer, microbial gators. A double layer has shown more effective.
• Masks must be worn on buses
• Teachers will get masks and can also wear a face shield
• There will be a video with a calming voice, like when you get on a Delta Flight and they tell you what to do when the plane crashes, that will reassure children that everything is going to be OK.
• Kids should be practicing wearing masks from August 1.
• Hygiene posters will be in every class telling students (that are old enough to read) how to wash their hands.
• PCSD decided on in-person because of social equity. This way can help equity.
• In-person will be done by a PC school teacher
• Remote will be done by a PC School Teacher “down the hall.” If a child needs to stop in-person because they get suck or their parents get sick they can go remote. [Note: this was somewhat contradicted in the PC Ed Foundation meeting because they said students would need to stay in-person or remote for a quarter. So not sure about this.]
• Remote attendance will require remote students to be online at certain times.
• June survey said five elementary kids per school would be remote.
• Not doing a split schedule because we don’t have 38-40 kids per class like some places in Utah.
• Teacher subs will be assigned to one school. They will not float.
• Dual immersion students should attend in person (recommended).
• Increasing fresh air to 50% in all schools… so dress accordingly. It may be COLD in the morning in schools.
• Lunch will be grab-and-go. Assigned seats will happen at lunch. High school kids may get to pick the table they are assigned to.
• A parent developed a new computer program called Health Attend. PCSD paying $1 a year for it. Parents will be able to look at how many people are sick in classes and make decisions on whether they should send their kids to school.
• The school is responsible for contact tracing in the event of a coronavirus case.
• The district is planning for intermittent attendance.
• Encouraging kids not to use lockers.
• PCSD is not using a purchased curriculum.
• Teachers will come back two days early. Teachers can take a seminar on how to teach remotely. Teachers must rely on their Principals. Teachers are empowered to innovate.
• K-2 will use See-Saw. 3rd grade through 12th will be Canvas. Teachers in 3rd to 5th grade need to learn Canvas.
• DLI 1st-5th should be done in-person but can be done remotely but not as well.
• Every school has an ionizer for air. They purchased those in March. Installed Merv 15 filters. Anything larger than 3 microns is filtered. Should help with mold, pollen, etc. as well as Corona.
• There will be mask breaks for elementary. Playgrounds won’t require masks.
• Schools will remain in-person full-time unless Summit County moves back to Orange and then schools will be a hybrid in-person/remote model. Red would mean fully remote.
• You have until Agust 7th to register your child for remote learning. Otherwise, they will be in-person by default.

So, those were my notes from the school board meeting and parts of the PC ED Foundation meeting. I don’t guarantee that the district said everything correctly or I captured it correctly but it should be generally correct.