Dear GMS Community,
This week’s beautiful weather feels like a gift as we continue to battle what we hope to be the worst of the pandemic. We hope you’ve had a chance to enjoy the warmth and sunshine!
Last week we shared with you that GMS would remain in remote learning at least through the end of January. Recent data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that California should see steadily declining case counts by the middle of February and that our hospitals should be past their peak resource use. We are now cautiously optimistic that we will reopen under the Grade Level Rotation Model beginning the week of February 22, 2021.
Our fingers are crossed as well that educators will be eligible for their first dose of a COVID vaccine in the next month. In addition to all of the protective measures already in place at GMS, we will require COVID testing for students returning to campus. To facilitate this requirement, the GMS’s COVID decisions team has been hard at work exploring the COVID testing and scheduling options available to bring students back to campus for in-person learning for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year. We found that the complexities of setting up a testing protocol may take a bit longer than we initially anticipated. We will share more details in the coming weeks. Still, we are confident that returning with even a few of these factors put our teachers and students in a significantly enhanced position for fewer disruptions during the remainder of the school year.
Under the new Grade Level Rotation Model, each grade comes to school for one week of in-person instruction, followed by two weeks of remote learning. As a reminder, students will remain in their small, stable cohorts, with teachers rotating between groups of students throughout the day and the week. Nominally we will follow the current remote learning schedule, where students have classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with everyone at home on Wednesdays for more independent work. We are working out some details of this model, including determining which grade would be on campus each week. We will share that information with you soon.
We are at a point where it will help get a sense of your response to this new reopening model. While the linked survey is not required, we appreciate as many responses as possible to gauge how many students will be on campus. This survey is not anonymous, nor is it binding. When we reach the point of asking families to commit, we will use Magnus Health, as we did for November’s Cohort Days. We also look forward to hosting Reopening Community Conversations in English and Spanish in early February.
In community,
The COVID Decisions Team, on behalf of Jennifer
