Olympia School Board to approve a school reopening plan

OLYMPIA –– The Olympia School Board, the governing body of the Olympia School District, is meeting Monday, Aug. 3 to discuss the district’s fall reopening plan.

When Washington schools were moved to an online system after Governor Inslee’s “Stay at Home” order was announced, parents, educators, and children started anticipating changes for the fall semester as the expected second wave of COVID-19 pandemic plays out during fall.

The meeting on Aug. 3 will inform everyone of a school reopening plan that complies with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Labor & Industries, and the Department of Health, as well as Thurston County Public Health. 

Reopening schools would require school officials in the Olympia School District (OSD) to follow the guidance from the State Department of Health (DOH), which directed schools to focus on hygiene, physical distancing, and other public health considerations, according to school board documents regarding fall reopening plans.

Schools would still be required to meet the 180-day or 1,027-hour instructional requirements regardless of whether that instruction is face-to-face or online, and schools around Washington were instructed to make plans if schools are ordered closed again this year. For some schools, fall reopening may be face-to-face, entirely online or a hybrid of the two. The district will further discuss using a single learning management platform which would create uniform and specific expectations for educator and student interactions.

District officials are expected to post reopening plans on the district’s website two weeks before the reopening. School officials, according to district documents, further expressed urgency to monitor and supervise the plan throughout the 2020-2021 school year, as circumstances related to reopening schools safely could change. 

The school board is expected to take up this issue at their board meeting on Monday, Aug. 3 at 7 p.m. For more information about Monday night’s meeting, take a look at their meeting agenda.  To log into the meeting, click on the Aug. 3 meeting link.

This story has been updated to include the most current information to log in to the meeting.