February 25, 2021
Toutle Lake School District Parents/Guardians and Students –
Under the direction of our State Legislature and OSPI, our Reopening Plan has been recently revised and posted to our website. The rationale for the directive was due to the fact that the second wave of federal funding for schools to respond to COVID-19 has gone directly to States, before being disseminated to local school districts. The legislature wanted to be assured that the money would be used by school districts to assist with getting all students at least some in-person learning (provided the families desired such – it is still allowable for some families to stay in 100% remote learning).
Here at TLSD, we have had some K-6 students attending in a hybrid model as of the first day of this school year (September 8, 2020). The same was true for our secondary students during the month of November, 2020. Unfortunately, the secondary students had to return to 100% remote on November 30, due to a spike in COVID-19 cases within our geographic region. With COVID-19 cases recently having dropped dramatically, our secondary students were able to return to our hybrid model on January 25, 2021. Given our educational offerings this year, our Reopening Plan only required a few “tweaks”.
While most of us would like to see all students being able to attend in-person five days a week, that probably will not become a reality during this school year. The primary reason for this is that the safety protocol of 6-foot physical distancing, keeps us “handcuffed” so to speak. Most of our classrooms do not have enough square footage to have all students at school and still maintain the physical distancing requirement.
In my Zoom meeting of earlier this week, Dr. Melnick with the State Department of Health, stated that this is not the time to be thinking of reducing the 6-foot physical distancing requirement. His rationale was that there are now at least three variants of COVID-19 making their rounds throughout the world, and two of them are already present in the State of Washington. He added that these variants are approximately 50% more contagious than the original virus. He concluded by saying that is expected that the vaccines will be effective against these variants, and once many of us get vaccinated we may be able to reduce the six-foot physical distancing rule. He does not expect that to happen however, until at least the end of this summer.
With that, we will continue to be vigilant in adhering to all of our safety protocols; and do our best in providing the most high-quality education possible given the restrictions upon us. Thank you for your support for the students and staff of TLSD.
Sincerely,
Bob Garrett
Superintendent
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January 21, 2021
Toutle Lake School District Parents/Guardians and Students – Our plan for returning Grades 7-12 students to in-person learning remains intact.
- All 7-12 students requesting in-person learning during this first semester, will return to the hybrid model (similar to the one that we had in November) on Monday, January 25th or Tuesday, January 26th.
- All K-12 students who have requested switching from the Virtual Academy to in-person learning will do so on Thursday, January 28, or Friday, January 29; depending upon which group they are assigned.
- For the few K-12 students who have requested switching from in-person learning to the Virtual Academy, they will make the switch on Thursday, January 28.
- Skyward messages and/or emails have recently been sent to all affected families. Please call your student’s building office if you have any questions.
Thank you for your support of TLSD and its awesome student body!
Sincerely,
Bob Garrett
Superintendent