Visalia Unified School District will move forward with the staggered approach to returning to in-person instruction, and would like to prove the following important updates to the community.
Elementary School Waiver
VUSD is excited to announce that the Board of Trustees approved the elementary school waiver on Tuesday, October 13, 2020, and staff submitted the waiver to the Tulare County Health and Human Services Department the next morning for their review and approval. Due to elementary school parent conferences and the Thanksgiving holiday, the target date for elementary students to return to school is November 30, 2020. VUSD has extensive safety and sanitation procedures in place to protect the health of the students and staff. The waiver application is available for public review at https://bit.ly/3iFBikN.
Elementary Schools
The District is prepared to return to in-person instruction on the AM/PM schedule for elementary school students on November 30, 2020. The final stage of this planning is to collect information on which students will return to school for in-person instruction and which students will remain on full time distance learning. Elementary school principals will send a short survey to parents to collect this information. Parents of elementary school students will receive an email with a link to the survey from the school principal by the end of this week.
Secondary (Middle and High) Schools
Visalia Unified appreciates the input of our secondary parents, students, and teachers who responded to the recent scheduling survey that collected their preference between keeping the current schedule or transitioning to an alternative schedule. A committee of middle school teachers and a committee of high school teachers designed the alternative schedules to allow more time for interventions and teacher planning time. The majority of parents and students indicated that they want to remain on the current AM/PM schedule, while the majority of teachers prefer to move to the alternative schedules that were proposed. The District is committed to continued collaboration to support the needs of families, students and teachers.
Visalia Unified School District is dedicated to returning to school in a safe and responsible manner.
What about all the staff that you aren’t notifing that have been exposed to Co workers that have COVID. It doesn’t seem safe to me. I know you’ve had lots of our breaks. Doesn’t seem right that because of funding the district is losing that you are willing to put kids lives on the line. No thanks