Good evening PUSD,
I want to begin by thanking the entire community, including parents, students, staff, administrators, community members, and teachers for all of the feedback over the past several weeks. We all share in the disappointment that we will not be able to welcome our students back in-person on the first day of school, August 13th. However, with Governor Newsom's order a week ago that districts within counties on the California Monitoring List will not be able to open their doors to in-person instruction, PUSD has been hard at work on its distance learning offerings for our families. While our buildings may not house our students, our schools will be open and our staff, administrators, and teachers will be ready to support them in every way possible.
We just completed a week of focus group meetings including representatives from all school sites who provided input and feedback regarding a wide variety of topics such as curriculum, daily schedules, training, grading, and assessments. Additionally, these groups addressed procedural issues such as dropoffs & pickups, meals, recess, restroom use, among many other items to ensure the health and safety of all students and staff when schools are eventually allowed to physically reopen to students.
PUSD is currently assembling all of this rich feedback and information and plans to combine it with the input we receive from the virtual Reopening Schools Parent & Community Forums set to occur on Monday, July 27th. The English meeting will begin at 4:00 PM and the Spanish meeting will begin at 5:30 PM. We appreciate the many parents, students, staff, and community members who have already requested the meeting information and are pleased to be able to accommodate up to 500 attendees per meeting.
Along with the valuable information from these meetings, we will continue to monitor the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) [Updated 7/23/20], California Department of Public Health (CDPH) [Updated 7/17/20], California Department of Education (CDE), as well as other state and county health authorities and plan to release a draft guidebook specific to the PUSD community that incorporates these sources. Given the regularly changing guidance and understanding related to COVID-19, please know that the information contained within will likely be adjusted as conditions evolve and new directives are issued by government and health officials.
As always, the health and safety of our staff and students is the number one priority and we appreciate your continued support as we work together to begin the new school year.
Sincerely,
Nate Nelson
Superintendent