MN - Safe Learning Plan for the 2020-21 School Year final.pdf (3.24 MB)

We were asked to come up with something to inform schools about  opening- an impossible task. This is really hard and there is no one right approach. We had a lot of discussions with partners and local experts. We wanted to separate out younger learners, where in-person was more important and where transmission may be controlled a little more. In general there were many students across grades that did not do well with distance learning last spring, some students do not have support at home for distance learning, and some students really need some level of in-person learning. I know you all know all the important things that schools provide for children and communities and that these need to be taken into account. There were concerns about equity. There is also language about making accommodations for children who for a variety of reasons, would benefit more from distance learning, as well as working with teachers who may benefit from teaching remotely due to health concerns in themselves or a household member.

We communicated that there will be cases in schools, and it is important to have a plan to rapidly detect and respond, and to have cooperation from families, staff and the school community. It also is key to be flexible and understand that a metric of cases for the county is one part, but other factors are important in determining an approach such as added space and safety measures (and compliance with the safety mesures) in the schools, whether the numbers of new cases reflect community transmission or an outbreak that does not have much impact on school community. The <10/10,000 (open) and 10/10,000 (open elementary, hybrid middle and high school) for new cases over 14 days are yellow (ESRI) or moderately high (a CDC metric on case growth)- if you adjust to 10,000 and growth over 14 days (ESRI is over 1 week). We thought 14 days more stable for our less populated counties (see attached, page 6 for additional metrics and details on in-person, hybrid upper, hybrid elementary, distance upper, distance elementary, etc.). 

We thought of these measures as a place to start to guide opening. Following opening it becomes important to assess what happens in the school. We also know that what we know a month from now will be different, so flexibility is key.