Dear Pirate Parents and Guardians,

As many of you are now aware, on July 2 Governor DeWine reviewed specific details of the state’s plan to reopen school buildings. The plan provides guidance on best practices that all Ohio school districts are expected to follow as they consider educational and programming options for the fall.

During his address, the Governor provided several key points that we must consider here locally as we make decisions that will impact our students, families and staff members. The Governor’s guiding points included:

1. Parents and guardians assessing their child(ren) for symptoms and conducting daily health checks prior to their child(ren) attending school. Schools will be required to provide opportunities for students to wash their hands throughout the day in addition to providing hand sanitizer at all entrances and exits.
2. Continuing to educate your child(ren) on the importance of washing hands, not touching one’s face and other best practices when it comes to hygienic guidelines.
3. Enhancing the schools cleaning protocols to ensure the safest possible environment for students and staff in all locations and places students gather such as playgrounds, classrooms, school busses, etc.
4. Continuing to practice social distancing. Schools should strive to maintain 6ft of distancing as often as possible. We know this will look different in every building and will require a great deal of flexibility.
5. Creating a face covering policy for staff and students.

We have been working diligently for weeks to formulate several draft plan options in anticipation of the Governor’s guidance. These drafts were heavily informed by the data provided to us in the parent and staff surveys conducted in early June. Now that these parameters and guidelines have been provided to us, we will immediately begin the finalization of our plans. I anticipate the plan being shared with our stakeholders in the next two weeks but certainly by the end of July. 

I certainly understand the difficulty that this delay has caused our families with respect to planning. Additionally, I recognize that many of our students and families still feel uneasy about returning in the fall. We are considering all of those aspects in our restart/return to school plans. 

We will update the community on our restart plan in the coming weeks. We appreciate your patience and flexibility as we work through this process. If you have individual questions please do not hesitate to email me at [email protected]  

Sincerely,

Bob Dunn, Superintendent

Southeast Local Schools