The Miami-Dade County School Board held a special meeting Wednesday, July 1st, to discuss the proposed plan to reopen Miami-Dade County Public Schools for the 2020-2021 school year. After a six-and-a-half hour discussion, the Board voted unanimously in favor of moving the plan forward and ask for parents to vote on their preferred model for their children.
The proposed plan includes changes to class sizes, school contact tracing of students who have symptoms, partitions on school buses to protect drivers, required at-home temperature checks, plexiglass dividers between teachers and students and mandatory mask wearing at all times.
Parents will need to select between these four models. The models include a 5-day in school model, two hybrid models (one with in-person every-other-day, the other with in-person two days on and two days off) of alternating student groups doing in-person and distance learning, as well as a full distance learning model.
The districtWhile creating the plan, the district provided parents and teachers a survey. Over 100,000 parents and 18,000 teachers participated in the survey, which helped district staff create this plan. The survey results were almost equally divided among distance learning, in-school and hybrid learning.
The distance learning program, My School Online, would allow for students to remain registered at their school. Once conditions change, “they can make a seamless transition back to their school.”
Parents will have the option to select from in-school education and distance learning for their children. Parental selection of their preferred model for their children needs to be made between July 6th to the 10th.
These models require the state being on Phase II of reopening. If the state regresses to Phase I, the district will revert to distance learning.
The 2020-2021 school year is projected to begin on August 24th.
There were 10,000 cases added in Florida today, most in Miami-Dade. Given that Florida or Miami-Dade has not met CDC guidelines for opening anything, why in the world would you open schools. You can obviously see what happens when you do not follow the CDC guidelines, you have this massive spike in cases. Do not add to the problem. Keep the children home.
Will teachers and staff be provided PTE/professional grade protective gear since they will be on the frontlines with thousands of kids every school day? Will teachers and staff also be given the opportunity to choose their level of safety comfort or will they not have a choice on how great an exposure they get that can potential harm other members of their families? Does returning high school students such as those at Coral Gables High School to the classroom also further the burden of exposure for Coral Gables as the students regularly gather after classes at Merrick Park and other locations within walking distance in the city?