• Roadmap Back to PSD full plan now available online
• Students who want to stay home as COVID-19 pandemic continues will be required to remain for a semester of distance learning, forms to apply due by July 17

The 2020-21 academic calendar year will start back on August 3 as originally planned, but those parents who decide they aren’t yet ready for their children to be around others during the COVID-19 pandemic will have the option of keeping them home through at least the December break.

Superintendent Laurie Atkins spent the majority of the Polk County Board of Education’s work session on Tuesday evening discussing the plan for students to return to classrooms this fall, and that environment will look a lot different than in year’s past. The plan at this time is based on the ability for students to return on August 3, and if conditions change then additional updates will be provided to the public.

Yes, there will be recess for younger students. Buses to pick up and bring children to and from school will continue to run. Cafeterias across the district will be serving breakfast and lunch as usual.

What’s different is the procedures that are being taken to mitigate the potential for COVID-19 spreading among faculty and students at each school.

Atkins said that the plan – crafted over the past months after the March closure of the Polk School District’s 11 schools at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis – came about as a result of the input of parents, educators, administrators, agencies like the Georgia Department of Public Health, Department of Education and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and thanked everyone for their assistance as she began the presentation.

The full Roadmap Back to PSD is now available online on the district website.

Her first announcement was that because Polk County falls into a minimal to moderate range of COVID-19 infections – less than 1% of the county’s population has tested positive since March 12 – that the District in consultation with the Georgia Department of Public Health is allowing students to return for in-person classroom teaching. She said many of the parents who submitted surveys after the school year concluded indicated they wanted to return to face-to-face learning as quickly as possible.

No student will be required to come back however if their parents feel it is unsafe at this time for them to do so, but with the one requirement that students will have to stay out for a full semester should they decide to stay out of school. Forms are now available online, and they must be turned back into the district no later than July 17 in order to be able to put together the virtual classrooms needed for students to utilize distance learning at home.

Atkins stressed that this year it is of great importance for the most up-to-date contact information be provided to the district for parents or guardians of students, since they will be sought out to collect their children as soon as possible if they show signs of being sick and have come to school.

In order to ensure that students are prepared for the worst case scenario – a shutdown of in-person classroom time again – Atkins said that two days a week will be dedicated to keeping up with distance learning while in the classroom itself, and students will be accessing Chromebooks to do so.

Should students have to return back home and undertake distance learning in case of another shutdown, those Chromebooks will be going home with each student grades 2 through 12. In that scenario, Pre-K through 1st graders would receive distance learning packets.

Ahead of the start of school this year is the first visible change: traditional open houses will not be taking place before the August 3 start of school.

Instead, only Pre-K, Kindergarten, 6th grade and 9th grade students will be allowed to visit the schools.

For all other grades, the homeroom teacher a student is assigned with will be calling their homes personally to talk to parents, and information about their classroom location, education coming up at the start of the year, and about their teachers will be posted on each educator’s personal PSD website. Atkins said teachers will even be sharing video greetings for their new students. Supply lists will also be posted online.

Another visible change at the start of the year will be over face masks.

“Wearing masks is allowed, but not required,” she said. She went on to explain later in the presentation that no masks will be allowed while students are engaged in classroom work or instruction, and that group work will be limited this year in classrooms as much as possible. Only students who are at-risk will be allowed to wear masks during any time of the day they are in a school, as well as educators.

“We know people saw on Facebook earlier that there were PSD masks,” Atkins said. “We had those made for employees not to wear all day long, but during transitional periods of the day when students are moving through the hallways, so they have them during those times.”

She said that student mask use is encourage during changes of classes for the middle and high school grades. Additionally, hand sanitizer will be available in every classroom, disinfectants to wipe down desks between class changes, and many more procedures are being taken. Students won’t be required to have a temperature check when they come to school or move around classrooms unless they say they feel sick, or they present symptoms.

Students will be sent to nurses to be further evaluated using procedures provided to nurses from Floyd-Polk Medical Center’s school nursing program.

The classroom for lower grades will become the focal point of their time at school, but they won’t be in there all day. Atkins said the plan will limit the amount of time that students have a chance to co-mingle outside of their classrooms in order to mitigate any potential COVID-19 spread. Students will have breakfast and lunch served in the cafeteria as normal, but they’ll carry their food back to class and eat together family-style. There will also be janitorial staff on hand to collect garbage from each class after lunch is over.

“We don’t want students and teachers to have to smell the garbage from breakfast and lunch throughout the day,” she said.

Teachers will move from class to class in third through fifth grades, while Pre-K through second grade students will remain with the same educators as they traditionally do during class days.

One area where parents have expressed concern is over recess. Students will have recess as a class together in designated separate areas, Atkins explained, but won’t be able to co-mingle as a grade level at this time.

P.E. will remain on the schedule as well, though Atkins explained that it will require students to alternate days between being outdoors with one gym teacher, and being inside the gym.

Middle and High school students will have to move from class to class as they have in the past, but signage, markings, and many other procedures are being taken to ensure that social distancing will be maintained. That will be the priority for all grade levels.

Bathroom use at lower grade levels will be on a class-by-class basis in order to limit exposure between classrooms as well. Students are also going to need water bottles sent from home with them for this year as well, since all water fountains will be closed for the foreseeable future.

The other major area where Atkins said that parents need to be aware of what’s happening is in bus routes. Two routes – one for elementary students, and one for middle and high school students – will now be required to lessen the numbers on each bus at a time. Elementary schools will now open no later than 7:55 a.m. with bus drop off for K-5 by 7:30 at schools, and 8:20 for middle schools, 8:25 for the high schools.

Dismissal time has shifted to 2:30 p.m. for elementary students, 3:15 for the middle schools and 3:20 p.m. for high schools to accommodate the requirements of the new bus routes.

To ensure student safety, Atkins said they have even taken into account what to do if no one is at home to collect a child in the K-5 grades when they arrive home.

“If elementary student and no one there to take them or meet and greet them, then important that kids returned to elementary school until parents can pick them up,” she explained.

Her hope is that the new procedures for bus routes provides positive results not just in keeping students healthy, but in reducing disciplinary problems as well and can be one aspect of the COVID-19 plan that might be kept.

“This has been procedure for buses in other counties for a while, alleviates issues between older and younger kids,” she explained.

Drivers will be required to sanitize the buses between running routes to and from school, and let the buses air out during the day and evening hours once students are returned home safely.

Some additional points to note about the plan:

• There will be no non-competitive field trips for the time being.
• During breaks from the school year, electrostatic foggers will be utilized in each classroom to sanitize school buildings
• NO VISITORS WILL BE ALLOWED ON CAMPUS.
• NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DELIVERIES FROM RESTAURANTS WILL BE ALLOWED
• Parents who are coming to school to pick up their students will be required to wait in the main office, and no more than 10 people can be in the office at one time.
• Students who are showing sign of illness must be kept home for their own safety, and the health and safety of other children and faculty in classrooms.