Weekly Hot News Podcast, January 17, 2022

On Thursday, January 13th, we shared a health and safety update with our students, staff, and families, which included information about our alignment with the CDC’s new guidelines for shortened isolation and quarantine. As a reminder, isolation is for people who have COVID symptoms or who have tested positive for COVID, regardless of vaccination status; quarantine is for people who have been exposed to someone with COVID. The chart on our website shows highlights of these new guidelines, for your reference. For more information, please see the full communication. Our Featured Event is the STEM Programming Challenge that took place in December at Tobias Elementary School. Tobias’s STEM teacher on special assignment, Helene Cuomo, ran a programming challenge with classrooms in which they had to write a code that allows an adult “robot” to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The goal was to help students realize that very explicit directions need to be given to robots to perform a task. Helene won a grant for this project from the Hillsboro Schools Foundation last year, so members from the HSF board were invited to observe and/or participate in the exercise. www.hsd.k12.or.us