For Press Release: 7-21-2020
Jefferson ISD Superintendent Rob Barnwell said,
“I understand that parents, students, and staff have a lot of questions right now. I, along with our administrators and board members, have a lot of questions too. We are receiving new information weekly, sometimes daily, from officials at the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the governor’s office, and the University Interscholastic League (UIL, which governs extra-curricular activities). Although we want to provide all our stakeholders answers as soon as possible, this ever-changing guidance from Austin has made it very difficult to appropriately develop local plans to start school this fall. However, we have been working diligently on back-to-school protocols and we plan to publish those within the next few days. I will send this information to our media outlets, but we will also make sure these guidelines are on our district’s website and Facebook page too. Please understand it is a very good possibility that our plans and protocols must be amended as time goes by. Therefore, we can all expect changes, even after the information is shared with the public.
It has been rumored that TEA may force districts across the state to provide 100% remote (online) learning for a period of time when schools resume next month. At this time, JISD is still planning to provide on-campus instruction for those who choose that option beginning August 17th, which is our first day of school. As you know, we put out a survey to get information from our students/parents to help us determine the number of folks who will be choosing remote instruction so that we can properly prepare to assist those students/families with the provision of technology devices and internet service. That “back to school” survey is on our website.
Students will not be able to choose the remote instructional option if they intend to participate in extra-curricular activities, along with some of our electives related to Career/Tech classes. Due to the fact those types of courses are project-based and are more hands-on and physical in nature, instruction/learning would not be optimal in a remote setting. As I mentioned earlier, we will be providing more specifics on many subjects very soon. Our FAQs will address questions related to instruction, transportation, extra-curricular activities, food service, sanitizing, social distancing, face coverings, screening for symptoms, procedures related to quarantine or removal from the instructional setting for students and staff, re-entry criteria, etc. Most of our protocols are being developed in a way to directly follow Governor Abbott’s orders and TEA guidelines, which may be found on TEA’s website at https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/health-safety-discipline/covid/coronavirus-covid-19-support-and-guidance
I believe parents, or any interested person, should log onto TEA’s website and research the various links available, particularly the ones under the title of “Most Popular Guidance and Resources”.
Again, we will be putting out more specific, local protocols for JISD very soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to contact your child’s campus principal or myself, at 903-665-2461. Many times, the easiest way to contact me is through email. My email address is jrbarnwell@jeffersonisd.org
Stay safe, and Go Dogs!!