Weekly Hot News Podcast, November 9, 2020

The School Board will meet on Monday, November 9th, in a special session to hear the District’s proposed return-to-school plans for the remainder of the semester in accordance with updated guidance released by the Governor on October 30th. The virtual meeting takes place at 5:15 p.m. and will be publicly viewable at hsd.k12.or.us/livestream. Some of the key differences between the previous and current guidance are as follows: There is now a 14-day look back on the positive case rate, which is additive - meaning if you had a rate of 40 per 100,000 of population one week and 45 per 100,000 of population the next, the look-back data would be 95; whereas the previous guidance required a 21-day look back that looked at each week separately and required no more than 30 cases per week, three weeks in a row. There is no requirement for a statewide test positivity rate, whereas before the statewide rate had to be at 5% or less. And, The new guidance expands the reopening exception for in-person learning to include up to every grade in elementary school, with grades PreK through 3 prioritized, whereas previous guidance was limited to grades PreK through 3 only. Additional information about the new guidance, updated health metrics, exclusion summary and more is available on our website at hsd.k12.or.us/202021schoolyear. We will communicate the results of the Board special session and our return-to-school plans by Tuesday, November 10th.