Our Savior’s Lutheran School and Cathedral School are preparing to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the start of the school year in much the same way as Crookston Public Schools. Both schools are elementary-aged students, and they will start the year with face-to-face learning.
Our Savior’s Lutheran School Principal Sandra Trittin said they’ve made a few modifications including changing the location of a kindergarten classroom to help manage social distancing. “We sent out our school preparedness plan to the families a couple of weeks ago,” said Trittin. “We are opening with face-to-face learning for all students. We’re about at 60 students right now, so with our space and lower numbers we can socially distance pretty well with some modifications. We have moved a kindergarten class to a different space, so we have more room for first and second grade. And done some different things with entrances and exits, so we don’t have people crossing paths in the hallways.”
Students will be in the halls at different times, and each class will eat alone as well. Trittin also said the staff will work closely with parents to have kids who don’t feel well stay home in addition to checking temperatures and for symptoms at the door. “We definitely are going to be doing temperature and symptom checks when the students come in,” said Trittin. “We’ll be monitoring that and hoping our parents are working with us carefully so that students who don’t feel well can stay home until we know what they’re working with. We’re getting ready.”
Cathedral School Principal Stephanie Webster said they’ve made lots of modifications to have all in-person learning to begin the year. “We are going back to in-person learning,” said Webster. “We’re doing all in-person, no hybrid model. We are doing class caps, so we’re limiting the number of students within each class. We’re doing a lot of cohort grouping, so groups of students will work together throughout the day within the classrooms. Within the building, we’re working as much as we can on the physical distancing between students. Lots of modifications to how we usually do things to do it in a safer way this year.”
Webster said Cathedral School is investing in a self-check app for families to use at home before coming to school, and will also have screening set up at the building if families aren’t able to self-check before arriving. “We are doing screening for our students and staff every day,” said Webster. “We’re investing in a health screening app where families can take a temperature at home and answer some questions based on CDC recommendations. Then it gives them either a green light or a red light to come to school. When they get to school, they show us that green light, and they can come into the building. Or we will also have a health check screen at school too because we get it’s not always easy to do things in the mornings before school starts.”
Both Webster and Trittin expressed they were excited for students to return to school in the coming weeks.
