At Monrovia Unified, our priority is the health and safety of our students, staff, and families. This begins with ensuring a healthy and safe school environment, and since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, these efforts have been emphasized.
The District has followed guidance from the CDC, the state, LACDPH and the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) to develop our plan moving forward.
From the start of distance learning, we created two COVID-19 task force groups that have worked tirelessly to create a Hybrid Instructional Model that meets the needs of our school community.
The Elementary Task Force - comprised of teachers, parents, association members, and administrators - has now finalized the elementary hybrid schedule and will be presenting it during a webinar on Thursday, Feb. 25. The webinar will be presented in both English and Spanish and may be accessed by clicking the links below:
English, 6 p.m.: http://bit.ly/2M13Afg
Spanish, 7:30 p.m.: http://bit.ly/3auYaTc
We invite you to join the webinar to learn more about our hybrid approach as we move forward with presenting our plans to the county for reopening.
To safely reopen schools, L.A. County Schools and Districts must do the following:
- Complete the state’s COVID-19 Safety Plan, in consultation with labor and parent associations, and post it to the school and district website.
- Send the complete COVID-19 Safety Plan to the State’s “Safe Schools for All” team for review.
- Send the complete COVID-19 Safety Plan to LACDPH for review.
- Complete a LACDPH Reopening Protocol for Schools, as amended on February 11, 2021 (Appendix T1) for each individual facility that is reopening, post it to the school or district website, and submit it to LACDPH for review. This document will also need to be physically displayed at each open school facility, as described within the protocol.
Monrovia Unified has completed the first draft of each of the aforementioned documents, will be consulting with the appropriate groups, and will submit each document per the process outlined above within the next few days.
The following lists some of the critical next steps we will also be taking in order to reopen our schools:
- Incorporate feedback regarding the elementary hybrid model, finalize the model, and submit it to the MUSD Board of Education for approval
- Ask elementary parents to complete a commitment form to determine in which of the three models of schooling they would like to have their child(ren) participate: continued distance learning, hybrid learning, or independent study.
- Principals will assign students to the requested group and provide additional information unique to their school.
The announcement made by LACDPH came as a surprise to many of us, as just last week we were not close to reaching the county numbers of 25 cases per 100,000 residents. However, because of the diligent work of so many in our task forces who have worked tirelessly to investigate every option,we will be prepared for the day, when given the approval from the County, Monrovia Unified can safely open its doors to our elementary school students.
We look forward to you joining us on Thursday, Feb. 25 for our Hybrid Instructional Model Webinar. Please continue to stay safe.
Sincerely,
Dr. Katherine Thorossian
Superintendent