Reopening Extension Notice for Parents

Dear Harmony Families,

Creating a safe and academically-focused learning environment for our students and staff members is the top priority at Harmony Public Schools. After careful consideration, today we are announcing an extension of remote learning for your campus.

This extension will extend through at least Monday, September 14, and perhaps longer as Harmony continues to weigh guidelines from the Texas Education Agency and guidance from local and state health officials.

During this extension, campus and district leaders will continue to further evaluate the current and potential future impact of COVID-19 in our communities, as well as make final campus preparations based upon needs determined during our Learning Location selection period, which took place the past two weeks.

We understand that this extension may be a hardship for some families who opted to return to campus when possible. We assure you our campus and district staff are working tirelessly to make sure our campuses are ready for students as soon as in-person learning can safely and responsibly begin.

As a reminder, once students and staff return to campus, they will find a number of improvements and new wellness protocols designed to increase student and staff safety while retaining a fun, collaborative, and academically-focused campus culture.

Among these safety enhancements are:

• Temperature screenings for students and staff.
• Requiring all students and employees to wear a mask when on campus or in other group settings. (Students may bring their own mask, or the school will provide them.)
• Limiting average class sizes to allow for social distancing. (Exact class size will be dependent on the number of students attending in-person versus online-only.)
• Spacing desks at least six feet apart to maintain proper social distancing and/or installing partitions where students cannot be kept six feet apart.
• Severely limiting classroom rotations/switches to prevent the spread of germs across campus and to limit person-to-person exchanges.
• Staggered drop-off and pickup times to limit person-to-person exchanges.
• Modified drop off and pickup procedures (ex. Students going directly to class after drop off and/or waiting in the classroom at the end of the day until a parent arrives for pickup).
• Requesting all students to wash their hands frequently.
• Detailed nightly cleaning by a contracted company.
• Required Coronavirus Awareness & Prevention training for all employees.

 

Additional details on these and other safety protocols can be found in Harmony Public Schools Back to School Playbook.

We are excited to open our doors to our students and staff hopefully very soon. Thank you for your ongoing support and feedback throughout the reopening process.

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