Pre-School Planning

Update:
The School Committee voted on August 12 to move forward with the In-Person Learning at Pre-School approach.

To read Gloucester's full submitted plan for school reopening, please click here.

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Gloucester Integrated Pre-School

The priority at our integrated Preschool, in which the majority of students are in the high needs category, is for an in-person model that follows the normal daily schedule as closely as possible. Key findings from the review of our classroom set-ups and our developmental curriculum model leads us to determine that we can return all children with IEPs within an integrated model if we limit class size to 11 students. During our analysis we considered how to develop clearly defined spaces, how the environment is designed to enhance communication, where to stand/sit, flow and how to directly teach behavior expectations. With a class size of 11 students, we will be able to provide developmentally appropriate programming and provide in-class lunches in the preschool complying with 6 foot social distancing minimum. The preschool substantially separate classrooms are currently full day/4 day per week classrooms and will remain the same.

In-Person Learning @ Pre-School

To do a significant amount of in-person learning, the Pre-School would have to make schedule changes.

• We currently offer half-day session in the morning and afternoon four days per week

• Our current ½ day classrooms, with two different cohorts of students learning in a classroom each day creates the risk of cross-contamination.

• We are considering changing our half day sessions to full day (5 hours) sessions for two day per week

• This modification eliminates the need to do extensive cleaning between morning and afternoon sessions.

• All special education full day/4 day per week classroom schedules would stay as they are

• allowing us to maintain IEP programming and services for special education students.
  

Hybrid Learning @ Pre-School
Considering the high needs population at the Pre-School, we are planning to continue with an all In-Person Learning model until increased local community transmission and infection rates require us to move into a full remote learning model.

Full Remote Learning @ Pre-School

If an increase in local community transmission and infection rates cause the Pre-school to go into a Full Remote Learning approach:

• School administrators will ensure that all families are able to access preschool remote learning lessons, live learning activities and related therapies.

• Technical support will be provided to families who have difficulty accessing remote learning.

• Translated documents and interpretation will be available to families of our ELL students

• Teachers and specialists will provide detailed weekly lesson plans for families to follow, will take attendance daily and will provide continuous family support via telephone and email.

• Preschool teachers are currently participating in SeeSaw training this summer and are continuing to improve their Google Classroom skills in case we need to move to a Full Remote Learning model.