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As Dewey Public Schools starts the new school year on Thursday, August 12, Supt, Vince Vincent reminds parents and students of the Dewey Schools Back School Plan:

 

1. There is no mask mandate. Recent state legislation, Senate BIll 658 (see link below), has prohibited schools from requiring masks to be worn while at school unless certain conditions have been met. Those conditions have been outlined within the Bulldogger Back To School Plan.

 

2. Whereas last year we approached student and staff quarantines with a broad scope, we will be handling close contact quarantines in a much different manner. Our initial plan will be to focus more specifically and intentionally on individuals that we know are close contacts to someone testing positive prior to issuing quarantines. For those that are potentially close contacts, staff and families will be notified as such and will be given the opportunity to determine if they want to quarantine ONLY if they have no symptoms. Individuals experiencing symptoms will still be required to quarantine. This will more than likely eliminate the need for large numbers of quarantines and/or classroom quarantines associated with singular cases.

 

3. We have adjusted our Bulldogger Online School (fully virtual learning program) to only be available to students in grades 6-12 and by application only. Prior to the pandemic, we had plans to introduce a fully virtual online learning program for our high school students but only for those that were a proper fit for that style of learning. Unfortunately as we responded to COVID-19, we believed it was necessary to provide this learning pathway for all Dewey students while we all dealt with the unknowns of having school during a pandemic. Although some students succeeded academically in this program, many did not. So we believe that offering the program in such broad fashion for a second consecutive academic year doesn't appear to be in the best interest of many of our students and would not benefit their academic growth.

 

Complete information can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YIIg2jfixmYNQLsu4g4QX55HsKHf4ZCcGRAFejZ_eqQ/edit