Plan Announced To Reopen Florida Public Schools At Full Capacity By Fall

June 12, 2020

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran announced their plans for fully reopening Florida schools this fall, including several incremental steps this summer.

This plan outlines the nearly $475 million in state directed education financial assistance provided to Florida through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In total, more than $2 billion in education-related aid was provided through the CARES Act.

“In Florida, we’re taking a smart, safe, step-by-step approach to re-opening, and this extensive data driven plan will ensure Florida students, educators, and families have the confidence and support needed to get students back to the classroom, which will in turn allow parents back into the workforce and allow Florida to hit its economic stride,” said Governor DeSantis.

After, receiving feedback from thousands of Floridians, including medical experts, community stakeholders, education leaders, and parents, two constant themes became apparent and are pillars embedded throughout the plan – keeping our education community safe and ensuring all students receive a first class education.

“It is critically important that we continue to show compassion and grace as we make decisions to safely get students back in the classroom,” said Commissioner Richard Corcoran. “We realize that to fully re-open Florida, we must do our due diligence and instill confidence in families which allows them to return to school campuses safely and ready to succeed. Data from across the nation and world clearly indicates it is safe to reopen schools in August. Additionally, we must and will attack the achievement gap by offering summer programs and engaging in significant academic interventions to ensure all children receive a world class education.”

Recommendations for Re-Opening

Step-by-Step Approach: K-12 Campus Reopening Steps 1-2-3

  • Step 1 – June – open up campuses for youth activities and summer camps.
  • Step 2 – July – expand campus capacities further for summer recovery instruction.
  • Step 3 – August – open up campuses at full capacity for traditional start of the academic year.

Step-by-Step Approach: Postsecondary Campus Reopening

  • Summer A and C Semesters – state colleges, technical colleges and universities are generally virtual, with the exception of first responder and some CTE programs.
  • Summer B Semester – open state colleges and technical colleges for in-person summer learning.  State universities continue to remain virtual as they have already decided for Summer B.
  • Fall Semester – open state colleges, technical colleges and universities at full capacity for traditional start of the academic year.

Reopening Strategies

  • Reopening is a locally driven decision
  • Education institutions should create a local safe schools plan to maintain in-person learning, which is the best method of education delivery for students.
  • Create a framework for local planning by creating a Crisis Response Team.
  • Establish partnerships and support in communities to make local decisions.
  • Promote risk reduction through a great culture of teaching.
  • Protect students, staff, and families with medical vulnerabilities.
  • Recommendations to Reduce Risks at the Front Door
    • Create a crisis response team at the district, school or program level, as applicable.
    • Post a crisis plan and response check list where they are easily accessible.
    • Consider screening students, employees and visitors through visual signage, verbal questions or visual assessments.
    • As feasible and while maintaining the goal of getting students on campus every day, explore staggered schedules, start and end times to limit crowds.
    • Monitor student and employee absenteeism closely, as absenteeism may be an early warning system of larger health concerns.
    • Regularly update employees, parents and students with emails on best practices for at-home preventative care.
    • Locally determine what constitutes an adequate prevention inventory that includes extra supplies of PPE, cloth face coverings, gloves, sanitizer, soap, etc.
    • Consider creating a protocol for incoming and outgoing mail and deliveries and consider creating a “timeout” or cleansing room.
    • Post signage about hygiene and social distancing in many very accessible areas.
    • Conduct employee trainings for all of the above and regular employee meetings on COVID-19 updates.
  • Recommendations to Redesign the School Day to Reduce Risks
    • As feasible, keep groups of students together throughout the day to minimize the number of people in close contact with each person.
    • As feasible, convert cafeterias, libraries, gymnasiums, auditoriums, outdoor areas into classroom space.
    • Explore allowing students to eat meals in traditional classroom space or outdoors.
    • Move nonessential furniture and equipment out of classrooms to increase distance between students and turn desks the same direction.
    • Maintain a maximum distance between desks as possible, even if not able to achieve 6 feet, and avoid sharing of textbooks, supplies and toys.
    • Consider setting up a secondary clinic in schools, exclusively for students showing symptoms of COVID-19.
    • Establish procedures in consultation with school health staff to quickly separate students and staff who become sick from others.
    • Create a disinfection protocol for cleaning door knobs, counters and other surfaces throughout the day.
    • Consider limiting nonessential visitors to campuses and programs.
    • Consider alternative meeting options for nonessential volunteer activities, clubs and other elective meetings that require in-person contact.
    • Explore limiting nonessential mass gatherings or reschedule as virtual gatherings.
  • Recommendations to Plan for Graduations, Sports, Band, Arts, Other Extracurriculars and Co-curriculars
    • Consult with the local department of health and the crisis response team.
    • At events, consider non-contact temperature testing of adults who will be direct participants and have close contact with students.
    • Monitor students who participate in extracurriculars for symptoms throughout the day.
    • All equipment, instruments, uniforms, etc. should be washed or wiped down after each use.
    • Explore an increased presence of law enforcement or staff at events to maintain adherence to social distancing.
    • Consider limited seating at events while allowing families to sit together and marking off seating for social distancing.
    • Consider having attendees arrive at events earlier, stagger exits and allow for multiple entry and exit points.
    • Explore options to maintain social distancing at event facilities: public restrooms, concessions, etc.
    • Consider ways to limit close contact between participants and attendees until an event concludes.
    • Identify a space that can be used to isolate staff or participants if one becomes ill at an event.
    • Determine what are adequate prevention supplies to have at an event for participants and attendees, including hand sanitizing stations.

Recommendations also include student drop-off and pick-up, consider contact tracing protocol, testing protocol, best practices, and considerations for buses.

Click here to read the entire plan (pdf, 143 pages).

NorthEscambia.com photo.

Comments

20 Responses to “Plan Announced To Reopen Florida Public Schools At Full Capacity By Fall”

  1. Allesa M Ciambriello on August 22nd, 2020 12:43 pm

    So I am teaching face to face AND launched at the same time for 6th -8th grade intensive math. These are the lowest math level students. Obviously, many have IEP/504/ELL. Day 1 – Day 9 online went well. Averaged about 2/3 or more online off my roster showing up daily. Now on Day 10. My first day with Face to Face/blended… and I already have THAT kid. The one who tries to throw a CV-19 protective seating location item… AT MY FACE. Called the Dean twice for his 8 plus times nicely requesting for him to stop or put it down or stop the other awful behaviors. DID anyone come to get him for the outburst distruption while I tried to teach in person and control my chat of online students? NOPE. He got away with it. I wish I could blame the pandemic. but nope. His last year teachers just laughed… and said they got hit by his brother last year and ended up with the same kid for two class periods the next year. WE are #$%&ed with having to control basic mental health. NOT for ourselves… we are sacrificed. BUT for the poor babies who HAVE to be at the free public institution we call ’school’ , and we will still be held accountable to a punk like this. YES, having to baby him and help him despite the other 22+ students each hour on the hour. IT”S wrong to make us deal with this. We should get more pay and more time off … and NO ONE can tell me we should just be thankful we have a job. WE all deserve a job, and we all have had our ‘lightning bolts” in life. TEACHERS should not die an early death from a forced work scenerio during a pandemic.

  2. Craig Gonzo on July 15th, 2020 5:38 pm

    We closed schools down with numbers much lower than current and with them quadrupled, we are opening at full capacity??? This is extremely unsafe in my opinion. Take the numbers off the table, call NCH is Collier County, call Gulf Coast in Lee County…ask how many beds they have in ICU. They are all filled with COVID patients, some are teens. This virus is playing Russian Roulette with your health. You may get a runny nose, you may sneeze a little, you may die. Are we really willing to risk our children’s health? All I am saying is call your local hospitals. THOSE numbers don’t lie. Beds are filled with COVID patients. Those people had more than the sniffles.

  3. Shawna on July 7th, 2020 10:41 am

    Happy to see this lets get back to life. I refuse to live in a bubble and I refuse for my child to live in one as well. The flu happens every year and if your so afraid of getting sick and not sending your kids back to school then you stay at home with your child and don’t send them back to school. The parents like me who are not scared to send my child back to school shouldn’t be punished for the ones who are whining about all this covid-19 ( flu) nonsense.

  4. Krus on June 15th, 2020 11:35 pm

    Schools need to reopen and get these kids back to their normal school schedule. Keep your kids home if they are sick You’re required to do that anyway. Also teach your kids how to wash their hands. I am so over this

  5. David Huie Green on June 15th, 2020 1:58 pm

    REGARDING:
    “Sure let’s just pretend like covid is gone”

    Wise or unwise, these many precautions are not what you would do if you were pretending COVID-19 was gone.

    David for success

  6. Mmk on June 14th, 2020 5:14 pm

    Sure let’s just pretend like covid is gone. Smh. Why are we reopening schools when it’s 100 times worse than when they closed them in the first place!

  7. Concerned on June 13th, 2020 7:15 pm

    How do we request for our children do be able to work from home since my elderly mother lives with us & has a chronic lung disease? I just take a chance with my family’s health & lives. Re-opening school without a vaccine is irresponsible. The only reason they are opening is that’s the only way the schools will be funded. There just has to be a better way, to where we are not putting lives at risk. All lives matter!

  8. Eric on June 13th, 2020 4:23 pm

    Opening schools is something that has to be done responsibly. I’m sure we as parents will have options to meet everyone’s individual concerns. Social distancing practices should be put in place through a phase 1,2,3 to ensure success of the reintroduction of students into the classroom. Students need school, parents need school, and it would be irresponsible to not meet the needs of the community.

  9. Bridget on June 13th, 2020 9:56 am

    I completely agree that the kids should get back to classrooms this fall. With some modifications. Possibly have a bus aide on every school bus to check temperatures of children before they even get on the bus. For the kids that don’t ride the bus they can possibly set up temperature taking stations at the entrance of the schools and indicate 1 specific entrance for those that don’t ride the bus. Just 1 idea.

  10. stacy noeth on June 13th, 2020 12:34 am

    The kids need to be in school. If you aren’t comfortable with schools reopening, then sign up for virtual or homeschool them, but I work full time with 2 in high school and a kindergartener grandchild whose dad is now a single parent and he has to work full time. Homeschooling is not a viable option for many and they need the schools to be open. For those of you who can homeschool, please choose that option if it works for you as it will lessen the burden on the school’s and then overcrowding on buses won’t be an issue.

  11. ensley boy on June 12th, 2020 8:58 pm

    @mom of 2- I was talking about the lack of social distancing.

  12. Allesa Ciambriello on June 12th, 2020 5:02 pm

    Please do blended learning, my idea is put 12 students in school on Mon/Wed. 2x’s a week. Then the other 12 students on Tues/Thurs. Leave Fridays for 20 min. rotations of electives classes and give core teachers Fridays off to grade papers and online work, clean the room and supplies, do in house lesson plans and online lessons, team meetings, parent conferences, IEP-504 paperwork. Obviously, as a middle school teacher I believe this would only be useful for 7th grade thru senior year.

  13. just saying... on June 12th, 2020 4:02 pm

    I think we should all be getting back to school, church, etc., and just get back to living again! If half of you people on here felt the same way about vaccinating your kids for the flu as you are wanting an untested vaccine for this virus, it would be different! Now don’t get your panties in a wad because I KNOW that this virus isn’t the same as the flu; but saying that,: the flu is deadly enough and yet you don’t vaccinate yourselves or your kids! If you have a child with a compromised immune system, by all means keep them home and homeschool. I also think older schoolteachers should take precautions until there is less cases. But don’t hold us all back because your fear is terrifying you! I am sorry but this should not be the “New Normal” or any crap like that! This is not living and it is not surviving! It is cringing in fear and falling prey to a crazed ridiculous media lunacy!!!

  14. Mom of 2 on June 12th, 2020 2:38 pm

    @ensleyboy protestors? In all the photos I’ve seen most of them are wearing masks! Meanwhile, when I go to ANY store in town almost no one is wearing them! People think Covid is over if you take a look around you in public. The shelves are filled with disinfectants again, no one is social distancing… it’s ridiculous. Now he wants to a open schools at FULL capacity. We Are DOOMED!

  15. Edgar Reed on June 12th, 2020 12:47 pm

    With the uprise of the virtus reopening for the fall would be unsafe for everyone.

    Please rethink this matter.

  16. John Doe on June 12th, 2020 11:53 am

    it’s going to be a hard winter. prepare for it to be as bad or worse than wave 1.

  17. ensley boy on June 12th, 2020 11:03 am

    Have they not noticed the covid-19 virus is on the rise? ( Thank you for that increase PROTESTERS).

  18. Rufus Lowgun on June 12th, 2020 10:33 am

    Sending kids back to school in the absence of a vaccine or even an effective treatment is neither smart, safe, nor data-driven.

  19. mat on June 12th, 2020 8:17 am

    How are they going to be practice social distancing
    on the school bus? They are currently packed unto
    busses like sardines. Many times I have seen three
    kids per seat.

  20. Brandy on June 12th, 2020 2:16 am

    Happy to see this. With my work schedule school from home is not an option.

Written by William Reynolds · Filed Under News