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Health and Safety Practices

Physical Distancing/Mitigation

The CDC and local health departments recommend maintaining 6 feet of physical distancing to all extents practicable

Physical distancing is supported by physical adaptations to spaces, visual reminders (wall and floor signage), clear procedures for movement, limited sharing of resources, and staggered schedules. We will also have plexiglass protective barriers on the desks of our students.

To all extents possible, students will remain with the same cohort of students in the same space and staff rotation between cohorts will be limited. Parent and visitor access to the campus will be limited.

The use of a section of our gym and the outdoors campus for weekday and weekend Masses by Our Lady of La Vang parishioners will comply with the school’s health and safety plan.

School Protocols for Physical Distancing - Arrivals and Dismissal

Employees

Before or upon entering the school, faculty and staff will access the Daily Health Screening Form In ParentSquare (School Communications System) to answer the following screening questions:

1) Within the last 10 days have you been diagnosed with COVID-19 or had a test confirming you had the virus?

2) Do you live in the same household with or have you had close contact with someone who in the past 10 days has been in isolation for COVID-19 or had a test confirming they have the virus? Close contact is less than 6 feet for 15 minutes or more.

3) Have you had any one or more of these symptoms today or within the past 3 days? Fever or chills, cough, loss of taste or smell, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing?

4) Have you had any one or more of these symptoms today or within the past 3 days and that are new or not explained by another reason? Fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea

If the employee answers yes to any of the screening questions, he or she will have to leave the school unless he or she presents a doctor’s note indicating he or she is approved to work at the school. Our faculty and staff are committed to serve our students and know the importance of being healthy, especially under our present reality. Our administrative assistant will be supervising this process.

Staff with any identified COVID-19 symptoms and/or a temperature of 100.0 or higher will be sent home immediately until testing and/or medical evaluation has been conducted.
We will be communicating screening requirements to all our faculty and staff and our administrative assistant will be providing periodic reminders to our faculty and staff throughout the school year.

The entire school has been divided into seven cohorts as shown below:

The students and staff in these cohorts will remain stable, that is, the same students and teacher or staff will stay together for the entire school day. Cohort 7 will use two classrooms.

Our rational for forming cohorts of more than 14 students is that we would like to accommodate as many of our students as possible since 75% of our students speak a another language at home (Spanish or Vietnamese) and since most of our students parents are unable to help them in their school work due their limited knowledge of English or their limited formal education.

Additionally, since more than 90% of our students receive significant financial aid and the financial situation of the parents requires for single parents to work more than one job, or in two parent families, both parents need to work, parents either have to make a decision to leave their children unsupervised at home or have to find child care with friends, neighbors and relatives, risking their children to unsafe environments.

Students Arrival in the car of Parents/Other Adults

Students will be scheduled to arrive at school at staggered times according to their last names from 7:15am to 8:15am. Arrangements can be made by parents to arrive at a different time if they previously call the office.

Parents will be accessing the Daily Health Screening Form in ParentSquare to respond to the COVID screening questions for their children(the same questions given to the employees in ParentSquare and listed in the previous page) before arriving or upon arrival to the school via their cell phones – the option will be given for students to bring a dated paper answering each of the questions and signed by parents for the students to be allowed into the school.

We will not be checking temperature in-person.

All students enter through the 8th Street entrance to the playground of the school. The majority enter in their cars and very few walk through the same gates. The few parents who walk their children to school will have to be wearing face masks as well as their children. They will be stopped at the entrance gates on 8th Street to verify if their response to the Daily Safe Screening feature of ParentSquare or their written form answering all the COVID-19 screening questions qualify the student to enter the school. The child will then be allowed in and the parent will leave without entering the parking lot.

All parents and students entering the school in their cars will wear face masks. Throughout the following procedure, the parents will remain in their car. Upon arrival each family is received by one of our five designated staff who check in their iPads the listings of students allowed in the school for the day generated by the Daily Safe Screening feature of ParentSquare. If the students of the family are not in the listings, they will have to turn in a form provided by the school in which they answer the COVID-19 questions and if applicable also turn in a doctor’s notice stating the child should be allowed in the school.

The student will be allowed to enter the school only if:

the name of the student appears on the lists generated by ParentSquare indicating the child
does not have any of the COVID-19 symptoms
the parents turn in a copy dated today answering the COVID-19 symptom questions indicating
the child does not have any of the symptoms
the parents turn in a doctor’s notice indicating the child has not being infected with COVID-
19, but should be allowed in school.

Otherwise, the child will have to leave the school parking lot without entering the school at all.

All students who are approved to enter the school through the above procedure must properly wear a face mask covering their nose, mouth and chin upon entering the school and upon leaving the school at the end of the day. Students in 1st grade or younger will be escorted by a school employee to his or her classroom.

Students arriving late (due dentist’s or doctor’s appointments, etc.), will be received by a school employee either at the front entrance (9th Street) of the school or at the back entrance (8th Street) following the same protocol described above. Two employees are in charge of supervising the playground on 8th street to make sure no parents or students congregate during the arrival process as well as during the dismissal processes.

Dismissal of Students

St. Patrick School_Reopening Plan Sept 4 (includeStudents will be dismissed at the end of the day in staggered groups by last name (four different groups in each cohort). Each cohort of students will send out students with one of the staff members in the cohort until they are all dismissed. Any of the students who are not picked up on time, are returned to the classroom until the adult picking them up arrives. If the student is not picked up after the four groups in the cohort of students leave, the teacher or one of the adult employees in the cohort will call parents and keep the child in the classroom until the adults responsible for pick up arrive.

Emergency Drills

St. Patrick School_Reopening Plan Sept 4 (includes maps etc. As students become proficient at all the new operation protocols, students will engage in emergency drills starting with one cohort at a time the first month to maintain distance while rotating the cohorts in a lapse of seven days to have every cohort participate in the drill. The second month two cohorts at a time would participate in the drill in a lapse of four days. The third month three cohorts at a time would participate in the drill in a lapse of three days, and finally on the fourth month, four cohorts at a time would participate in the drill in a lapse of two days. At all the drills, all students will be expected to be alert and participate observing silence and listening to directions while some move and others stay in place. A discussion will follow each drill to discuss the scenarios of what will be necessary to do in case of a true emergency.

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