001hello this is chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools wanted to give you a brief update of our situation today um i will apologize i'd like to keep these update videos around three minutes this one might go just a little bit longer we have a lot of content to cover first of all if you're connected to any media at all you're aware that things are continuing to change in the world of education in kansas and the mandates that are coming down and some of the requirements for us so i wanted to just update you a little bit about our process and what plans we are making and what school might look like here in clearwater first of all a group of over 40 teachers parents and community members met last thursday evening to start the planning
002process we met some virtually some on-site but trying to start the planning process of what will school look like in clearwater um we did set some priorities at that meeting and i want you to know that our first priority is the overall health and well-being of our students staff and community of clearwater the social emotional well-being as well as physical well-being we want everyone safe and healthy physically mentally spiritually all those aspects of overall health we also set a priority of academic success for each student if we're remotely or on teaching remotely or on-site we want rigor we want to know that students are learning so with that we are starting to plan for several different options because we don't know what will come one of those options no matter what we are doing here
003on site as parents if you do not feel that it's safe to send your child to school you always have the option of choosing remote education with clearwater schools this remote education will be different than what we did in the spring with continuous learning it'll be much more rigorous there will be more requirements and um it will also align with what's going on in the classroom you'll you'll have a contact point every day with one of our staff members to make sure things are going well at home and to get you what you need in your child what you they need to to learn we will also uh the nice thing about that is if you decide to come back at any time let's say the cobot 19 situation turns around you feel like it's
004a good opportunity for your child to be back in school they'll step back in and not miss a beat it's also also my hope that we will keep remote students connected socially with their peers that might be on site or other peers that are remote we we realize that importance of that socialization for students and we want that to happen as well so what is our plan we've probably seen some other schools release their plans and most of them like ours will will have at least three options and one is on site one is a hybrid so some on site some remotely and then one will be all remote learning and in clearwater which mode we are in will be based on the community health restrictions that are in place at that time so with
005our current sedgwick county community health restrictions with requiring masks and group size of we believe and we're pretty sure that we've got plans where we can have all students on site and still maintain some social distancing keep people safe school will look a little different but if you want your student on site they can come on site uh from our parent survey about 78 of our parents are ready for their kids to be on site they they want some sort of school going on in our buildings they also many of those people also feel like it's important to have safety measures in place so we will have that the second layer if we have more community restrictions where we can't have as many students in a classroom would be a hybrid model one of our
006blessings here in clearwater is we have a lot of facility space so we believe in some of our buildings that we will still be able to have all the students that would like to be on site on site but keep those small groups and keep them constant throughout the day so students aren't mingling as much in our hybrid model we may see more students go remotely at that time and particularly high school we might have to do some alternating schedules if we go to the hybrid model like i said i've seen several school plans that are doing alternating schedule even for their on-site model because they don't have the facility space per kid that we have so and then the third option is remotely where all students i shouldn't say all where most students are
007remote we believe that we're still going to have the opportunity to have some students on site for a small period of time so to get that special attention that we know that some students need to learn even during our remote situation so i released an update with a timeline in the first week of june that said that we would release our plan to parents on august 4th that timeline has changed at least a week mainly because of the governor's orders that it looks like we won't be able to start at the same time as we had first anticipated so a plan to have school board look at our the the planning teams work on august 10th and hopefully get that out on august 11th but i did want to give you a brief overview of
008what it might look like so we have some governor's orders and i just wanted to clarify on those orders there there are two orders that have came from the governor one is 2058 and this is the one that's getting the most buzz i think it's the delay of school and all school activities from august 10th until uh september 9th or through september 8th this would be anything that we're doing in the school building with kids a few exceptions of screening some students or if they're in college classes um they can go to the to the college and get those classes even as a high schooler that order does require the approval of the state board of education which is meeting tomorrow and we'll see how that goes if you asked me to predict that i
009would not venture to guess it's it's going to be interesting the other order is uh 20 59 is the number on it and it requires masks off frequent hand washing and hygiene and temperature checks for anyone before they enter our school buildings so our planning team has that and they'll be taking a look at that and see how that might change what we had already planned it's very similar to the sedgwick county health order we were under so i don't anticipate a lot of changes for that i mentioned sedgwick county health several times ultimately we must answer to them they have the authority to close our doors if we are not in compliance with their health orders and um i've heard that there's conversation at sedgwick county health that we may see a reduced group
010size soon so we'll just have to take that as it comes there's also questions about does the county have the authority to overrule or be less restrictive than the governor and the answer to that depends on which lawyer you talk to there's no case law to settle this so as of right now we are under the assumption that the governor's order will stick so what are we doing to get ready uh one of the first things we're doing is a meeting with a calendar team so i've put together some draft calendars so we can get the required amount of school even if we do need to start september 9th um i believe that if everything goes well which obviously in 201 2020 it has not gone well but if everything goes well we could still
011be finished uh before memorial day so uh have a somewhat normal school year even starting after september 9th as of right now up till august 10th we can maintain our scheduled activities of like summer weights and some some athletic practices not practices but athletic workouts with social distancing and mask and those things as we have been doing and summer school which started on monday we are still planning to have graduation outside uh mr mellon has done a fabulous job of putting in a lot of safety measures so we believe everybody can be safe and having it outside makes it a much better option we are also in touch with kansas state department of education in the county i meet regularly with many superintendents as we're all trying to figure this out one thing i want
012to end with is i do believe no matter what happens we can provide a high quality education for every student in clearwater if you have any questions about how we might do that feel free to reach out to me give the district office a call my email is ccooper usd264.org love to have a conversation with you um i honestly believe that that our remote learning will be robust enough that if you're considering home school we can help with that um if you'd like to go a virtual option the remote would be would fit that bill so before you make a lot of decisions if you want to give me a call do that obviously i respect your decision about the safety of your child we just love the opportunity to provide what i think will
013be a very high quality education for your child this school year i want to thank our staff and the community i'm new to the community i've been welcomed very warmly my family has fit in very well and really appreciate that lastly i should probably thank my wife for the making my office look very presentable for this video and the nice painting she painted and came and decorated this weekend but anyway i wish everyone the best i will try to do these updates and i will try to make them much shorter but a lot of information today give me a call connect with our facebook or twitter feeds that's where we're going to try to keep this information coming to you on a regular basis thanks again and uh take care i look forward to meeting
014many of you face to face soon and or someday and uh getting to know the community of clearwater even better thank you