TWIN FALLS, Idaho — We're getting our first look at the Twin Falls School District's plan for the fall.
The district presented their first draft of the plan to the school board Monday evening.
The plan will work on a levels system determined by the amount of community spread in Twin Falls.
The four levels are:
- Green: Means it's business as usual for the schools, with in person classes and typical school protocols
- Yellow: Stricter focus on COVID-19 precautions (social distancing etc.)
- Orange: A "hybrid" between online and in person. Half the students would be in-person and the other half would be learning online. It would rotate on an "A" day "B" day type schedule.
- Red: Complete return to distance learning (similar to what we saw this spring)
“Ideally, we would like to operate in green as much as possible. With that being said, some might feel that the safety precautions in yellow seem pretty stringent. That is by design,” Dr. Brady Dickinson, Superintendent of the district, said. “If we are seeing an increase in cases in our community, we would like to take additional precautions to keep our operations out of ‘Orange’ or ‘Red’ which would limit the amount of time students would physically be on campus.”
The district says it's important to keep in mind the details of the plan might change.
"One thing I do want folks to understand about the plan is, it has to be nimble. It can't be written in cement because we're still learning about this virus," explained Dickinson
The district says the plan was made in close partnership with the South Central Public Health District. After close conversations with them, the district says they'll likely
enter the school year in the yellow level.
The first day of school is August 19, 2020.
In order to finalize the plan, the Task Force is asking the community to review the plan and provide feedback. The full plan is posted on the TFSD website and community members can provide feedback through a form also found on that web page.
The Task Force will be collecting feedback on this draft until July 20 and will make changes based on feedback to be presented to the School Board with a hope of finalizing the plan by July 27.
