Families should receive more details in the coming weeks about reopening specifics
Cloverdale Superintendent Betha MacClain announced on March 15 that the Cloverdale Unified School District (CUSD) would be reopening all of its schools for hybrid in-person learning as soon as students get back from Spring Break, with a reopening date of April 12. The announcement came a day after Sonoma County entered the red tier of the state’s Blueprint for a Safety Economy.
Entering the red tier relieves local districts of various requirements that they would have faced if they tried to reopen while the county was still in the purple tier — namely having to seek approval from local and state health officials for its COVID-19 Safety Plan and having to conduct and pay for regular virus testing. Once the district reopens for in-person learning under the red tier, it won’t be required to close if virus case rates push the county back into the purple tier.
In her letter to the community, MacClain said that one of the reasons the district is waiting until after spring break to open for in-person learning is to allow a two-week period between when vaccinated CUSD staff get their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, since it takes two weeks following the final dose for the vaccine to become fully effective. Waiting also gives the district time to finalize its reopening plans, training and preparations, something it will be doing between now and spring break (which runs from March 29 to April 9).
According to the announcement, as reopening for in-person instruction gets closer, families will be receiving the Parent Compact and Students Code of Conduct, which outline in-person attendance requirements and safety precautions; correspondence confirming student schedules through the end of the school year, including whether a student is on hybrid or distance learning; and information regarding arrival and departure from campus, as well as other details.
During recent school board meetings, parents have inquired about whether or not the district plans to send out a new survey regarding if families intend to send their students back to in-person learning. While a new survey won’t be sent out, MacClain said that families can reach out to their school office if they want to change their preferred learning choice.
“While we are not reopening our family survey regarding instructional model choices, families may contact their school office to be added to a waitlist if they originally chose continued distance learning and now prefer hybrid, or vice versa. It is our hope that we can accommodate every family’s choice without having to redesign our instructional model and schedules,” MacClain said in the announcement.
To view the district’s COVID-19 Prevention Plan, school checklists and individual site COVID-19 Safety Plans, visit the district website where- https://cloverdale-ca.schoolloop.com/covid-19-prevention-plan?iframe_preview=true
