D93 COVD-19 precautions update

BONNEVILLE COUNTY, Idaho (KIFI/KIDK) - Bonneville School District 93 released the following letter regarding the coronavirus:

Thursday, March 12th, 2020

To the families of our District 93 students,

The outbreak of the coronavirus has created an understandably heightened level of concern among our parents, students, and staff members. I want you to know that this is a concern for us as well, and we take the responsibility of safeguarding our children’s safety seriously. We are continually monitoring this situation closely using guidance from the following official sources:

• Center for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/), 
• Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (https://coronavirus.idaho.gov/)
• Eastern Idaho Public Health (https://eiph.idaho.gov/). 
   

While a heightened level of concern is certainly understandable, the communications from these agencies has cautioned against overreactions and panic. We do, however, want to make sure that we are taking the necessary precautions to minimize the risk to our students, our staff, and our community. 

Current Actions

Here are the steps that we are asking teachers and staff to take immediately.
 

• Restriction of School-Sponsored Travel for Students and Staff
  • All school-sponsored trips for students and staff that require airline travel will be cancelled. No further trips will be approved until the situation improves. 
  • Travel to states with more than 10 identified cases of COVD-19 (including California, Oregon, and Washington) must be canceled until further notice. For an up-to-date listing of restricted states, please refer to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html 
  • Please note that some teachers or community members may have organized field trips abroad or within the country that are not school sponsored or approved. These trips are outside of our authority. If you have concerns about your child traveling on one of these trips, please contact the organizer directly. 
  • We will ask our coaches and advisors to work with venues to get refunds for prepaid costs. If costs cannot be reimbursed, the District will work to reimburse prepaid fees to families. 

• Student and staff travel within the state of Idaho will continue unless the situation deteriorates significantly.
• We will continue to monitor the situation and communicate any necessary changes.  

We will continue to disinfect desks, light switches, and other common surfaces.

• Custodians will work through each classroom on Friday to disinfect common surfaces including desktops and light switches. 
• We are also encouraging teachers to help keep classrooms sanitized by working with students to keep desks and other common surfaces clean using approved disinfectants.

We will work to minimize the risk with shared computer keyboards.

• Teachers will work with students to disinfect Chromebooks and shared keyboards regularly.
• Teachers have been asked to limit the use of shared Chromebooks to activities that are absolutely essential such as research-based interventions (Lexia and Imagine Math, for example) and necessary writing and research activities. Nonessential activities on Chromebooks should be discontinued. 
• Students will be asked to wash their hands (or use hand sanitizer) before and after using shared computers.
   

Most importantly, we are encouraging our staff and students to take care of themselves.

• If students are ill, especially with a cough and fever, please keep them home to get well. 
• Students and staff are encouraged to wash their hands frequently with warm water for at least 20 seconds.
• If you are traveling over Spring Break, please be vigilant in following these precautions.

Future Planning

At this time, we do not plan to cancel school in response to this outbreak and do not believe that we will need to take that step. However, we believe that it would be prudent to take some preliminary steps to develop a plan in the unlikely event that this becomes necessary. We are asking families to answer a few critical questions to help us evaluate the possibility of providing online instruction to students at home. 

Here is the link to the questions: https://d93.org/COVD19-questions. 

Thank you for your understanding as we work together to do what’s best for our students, staff, and community.

Sincerely,

Dr. Scott Woolstenhulme
Superintendent