Registration for prospective Rocky Ford students wraps up today at 7 p.m. Rocky Ford School District will be implementing opt-in online learning for the fall quarter, but parents will have to decide if their kids will attend in-person learning or study from home when they register for classes, according to the district’s final 2020 – 2021 school year plan.
Registration ends at 7 this evening, but the school district is allowing parents up to Aug. 10 to decide whether they wish to opt in to remote / online learning for the fall quarter. According to the school year plan, up to 10 people may visit school staff in the high school cafeteria for additional registration support. Spanish support will also be available, the plan said.
The school district is planning to provide Chromebooks to all students, Kindergarten through 12th Grade. Chromebooks for students up to 2nd Grade will have touchscreen capabilities for ease of use for younger students. All the devices will have cameras and speakers for use in virtual classroom settings. The district will also purchase insurance for each device, according to the school year plan, and provide students with a protective sleeve or carrying case for the Chromebooks.
The district has scheduled eight days of Jump Start learning in which small in-person group instruction will be held. Jump Start learning is scheduled for Aug. 17, 18, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, and Sept. 1.
Classes for all students are scheduled to begin Sept. 2. Kindergarten up to 6th Grade students will have in-person learning in groups of cohorts while grades 7 – 12 will use a hybrid approach, that being a combination of remote and in-person learning.
“The three phases in Colorado for protecting against the spread of infection during the pandemic (Stay At Home, Safer At Home, and Protect Our Neighbors) dictate how much in-person instruction schools can provide,” reads the plan. “Otero county is in the Safer At Home phase which means that the school district is allowed to provide in-person instruction as long as students are grouped into cohorts and there is minimal interaction between different cohorts.”
Cohort groups are essentially the kids or teachers a student will interact with on a daily basis. Because the threat of spreading COVID-19 remains ever-present, contact between different groups of students is limited.
For students in 7th through 12th grades, in-person learning will be assigned according to a Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday schedule. Off-days during which students are not learning at the school, they will still be expected to practice remote learning from home, according to the school year plan.
The school year plan states that some classes will be prioritized for in-person learning and the schools will provide orientation at each grade level because of the complexity of the schedule.
Schools will perform health checks on students before they board the busses or enter the school buildings in the mornings, said the plan. Students will be asked if they have a cough or shortness of breath, or if they have been exposed to someone infected with COVID-19.
The plan said the district will ask all students to attend school with a face mask. Masks are required to be worn when entering or exiting a school building and in any public area within the building, “including the front office, hallways, and libraries.”
However, the plan makes exception for mask use in classrooms. Teachers will have discretion over whether or not to enforce the state-mandated mask order, the plan said.
The plan states, “Scientific evidence has shown that children around the age of 10 and younger are not transmitting the virus to each other or to adults,” although even studies claiming such cited by state school reopening guidelines acknowledge that data gathered was preliminary and that social distancing measures may have had an impact on results.
Health checks and mask use will also be required of visitors to the school, according to the plan.
The plan states the cafeteria may not be able to accommodate all students given social distancing and sanitization standards, and given that, some classrooms may be used as additional cafeteria space. Self-serve salad bars will not be available due to health standards. However, the district’s food service program will be available at the high school bus loop as a drive-up meal service. Lunch times will be communicated to parents “through a variety of communication methods,” said the plan.
The school district is ending some bus stops due to revised transportation plans under social distancing guidelines. Bus stops at the following locations have been eliminated, the plan states: 18th & Hopkins; 14th & Pine; Library Park; Central Office; Melonaire Apartments; Emerald & Rd EE; Ewers & EE.5; 1st & Spruce; 3 rd & Maple.
Regarding extracurricular activities, the school year plan states activities that fall under district control, such as Storytellers, Destination Imagination, Future Farmers of America and Future Business Leaders of America, will likely be allowed to operate as long as health guidelines are followed. Sports are trickier because the school district takes guidance from CHSAA and thus sports can be hard to predict. The school district’s point was illustrated Tuesday when CHSAA announced it was pushing football and girls volleyball to the spring quarter in light of the ongoing pandemic.
Lastly, the school year plan addresses concerns about what will happen to classes and learning opportunities in the event that local COVID-19 cases rise substantially. The school district, the plan states, will be able to switch back-and-forth from in-person learning to remote education.
“For example,” says the plan, “if the district receives a call from the health department on a Wednesday morning and schools need to close, the district would shut down classes early that day and then eLearning would start the next day, on Thursday morning. Once the health department gave permission, in-person instruction would resume once again. It is fully expected that the district will experience some of these rolling starts and stops. However, remote learning is now a tool that the school district can use for a variety of purposes.”
The plan points out that online and remote learning opportunities are a boon to the school district, pandemic or not. Remote learning, says the plan, can be implemented in the event of other school closures. One example provided was that in the event of a school water pipe breaking. Despite on-site learning not being an option, the district could continue education through remote learning while repairs are made.
The plan also noted that despite the newfound ability to work from home, students will still get to enjoy the occasional snow day and like days off.
The school year plan for Rocky Ford School District can be read in full on the district’s website at http://www.rockyfordk12.org/.
Tribune-Democrat reporter Christian Burney can be reached by email at [email protected]. Help support local journalism by subscribing to the La Junta Tribune-Democrat at lajuntatribunedemocrat.com/subscribenow.
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