CALDWELL, Idaho — The Caldwell School Board on Monday night voted to begin the upcoming school year with remote-only learning.
After meeting with health officials, the board approved the recommendation by Superintendent N. Shalene French to begin classes in the "red phase" of the district's reopening plan, meaning all instruction will be done entirely online.
"We had really hoped that we could open in yellow with kids present, but last night with all that information, they made the decision that we are opening in red or remote learning only," Caldwell School District spokeswoman Allison Westfall said.
The school year is scheduled to begin on August 27. According to the district, every student will be provided a device to use for remote learning.
"It's going to be very different than last spring in our district. We are using some of our COVID-19 federal funds to ensure every student has a device and those will be distributed very soon to families and they will be working with their schools to be accessing lessons, submitting work, the work will be graded and it will count," Westfall said.
Canyon County is currently designated by Southwest District Health as having substantial community spread of the coronavirus.
In a message to parents and staff Monday night, French said the remote-only learning would last through at least October 2 and that the board would make a decision on September 21 whether to bring students back to class on a part-time basis.
"The spread of the virus in our community has continued to worsen," French said in the message. "We appreciate your patience. We know that many of you share our deep disappointment that the spread of the virus continues to impact our daily lives and the lives of our students.
"Our dearest hope remains that prevention measures will be embraced in our community and virus levels will drop and schools can reopen their doors to serve students in person quickly," French added.
"Of course, we're going to be watching the level of spread in our community all the time. We meet weekly and more with our local health department, but they've set a formal time at the end of September to revisit it," Westfall said. "So we're telling parents to expect to be in remote through the first part of October, with the decision being made later in September so they can plan are we going to be able to continue in remote or as we hope that our community will embrace all of these prevention measures and we can get into yellow, maybe green someday."
District officials said more information about device pick up and meals will be made available to parents before the start of virtual classes on August 27.
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