Superintendent introduces school's health dial

Superintendent Dale Martin shared the following information with Summerland families, July 28.

Our district administrative team and the Summerland Board of Education, in consultation with the North Central District Health Department, Nebraska Department of Education and following the Center for Disease Control guidelines, is planning to start the 2020-2021 school year with in-person, normal instruction, Aug. 13.

The schools of Summerland - Clearwater, Ewing and Orchard - will operate within the framework of the four risk color statuses of the COVID-19 risk dial, as designated by the NCDHD.

Green is low risk, yellow is moderate risk, orange is elevated risk and red is severe risk. Each risk category will have corresponding measures that our schools will put in place to help mitigate risk factors. We will be following the current directed health measure put in place by Governor Ricketts, the recommendations of the NCDHD and also the CDC.

In visiting with many parents across the district, I feel we have a shared goal to have students in school as much as is safe and possible. One of the most helpful things that you, as a parent, can do is to monitor your child's health conditions each day.

We are encouraging parents to do a temperature check of their children before they leave home for school. The CDC has set 100.4 as the temperature at which children should not be in school. School personnel will be conducting temperature checks as students are ready to board school transportation and at the entrances to the schools. Any child with a temperature of 100.4 or above will not be allowed to ride school transportation and/or enter the school buildings. If a child has a temperature when he or she arrives at school, he or she will be isolated in a separate area until parents can pick him or her up.

Currently, the CDC is recommending that if you think or know you have COVID-19, it is safe to return to school if it has been at least 10 days since symptoms first appeared and it has been at least 24 hours with no fever without fever-reducing medication and symptoms have improved. If you have a positive test for COVID-19, it is also safe to return to school when you have two negative tests, 24 hours apart. If you have been exposed to a positive COVID-19 individual, the recommendation is to self-quarantine for 14 days from the last exposure. If no symptoms occur, then you are clear to return to school.

Thank you in advance for your help with making this plan work. It will take each and every one of us working together to make our schools and communities the safest places possible. I have greatly appreciated the spirit of cooperation I have witnessed among the school administrators across the state and region and the guidance and assistance we have received from our local ESU, NCDHD and NDE. If we continue to collaborate on the best practices to put in place this year, we will all benefit.