Crookston School District Superintendent Jeremy Olson sent out an update to district families today. Here is a quick update from Crookston Public Schools:
Learning Model:
Crookston High School is moving away from the hybrid learning schedule for the first time this year as we transition to a more normal school experience. On February 1, the 7-9 grades transitioned to in-person every day and the 10-12 grades remain in a hybrid schedule through February 12. On February 16, the 10-12 grades students will transition to in-person every day. This staggered transition time was done to be in compliance with Governor Walz’s executive order that required transitioning no more than three grades within a two-week period. I want to be very clear that while we transition to a more normal schedule, we must realize that we are still keeping our COVID protocols in place. Covid-19 is still alive and well within our community and we need to stay vigilant in order to continue to provide this face-to-face instruction to our students.
Prom and Graduation:
Crookston High School is currently exploring how to give students the best experience possible as we start to look at Prom and Graduation planning. We are currently in the process of exploring what we can do to give students these experiences in a safe and prudent manner.
Communication on Positive Cases of COVID-19:
We transitioned to a dashboard concept for communication of positive cases in our schools. This can be found at https://www.crookston.k12.mn.us/covid-19 and click on “COVID-19 Case Dashboard”. This is updated in real-time and will have the most accurate information by week and school building.
Temp Checks on buses:
We will be discontinuing temp checks on buses starting on February 8th. The reason for this is that in cold weather many of our temp checkers have reported errors as the ambient temperature for a temp check needs to be 40 degree F for accurate readings. We are also experiencing several students who have waited outside reading incredibly low temps. While we believe this is a good strategy in the more mild months, it does appear that this is a strategy that is not holding up well to our MN winters. We will continue to scan all students inside the school entrances as this is a much more controlled environment. As such we are asking parents to monitor temperatures in addition to monitoring for other symptoms of their students before they leave the house as early detection is important.
Communication with the school:
We continue to ask our parents to communicate with the school if your student is identified as positive for COVID-19. We are also asking that you keep your child home from school if they are experiencing symptoms. We want to keep all students safe and in school, we can only do this if we are communicating well. If you have something that comes up over the weekend, please feel free to contact me on my cell at 218-770-8717.
Lastly, I want to thank our parents and community members for all the extras that you are doing this year. We have several families that are transporting their children to help us with transportation due to the 50% capacity limits still in place. We know that this year has not been easy on working families as you try to balance family and work. We are hopefully moving towards the end of this pandemic and it is my hope that the next school year will be a normal school year. We continue to thank you for and rely on your help to make this all happen. As always, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have. Thank you from all the staff at Crookston Public Schools as we partner with you to keep our schools safely open!
