If you would like to volunteer for the Telluride School District we would love to have you.
Click on the link below for our current volunteer needs:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IadfXW9YUIfJ2nXb1RCL0XvpluEb4Uk4g1suSfKY1kw/edit?usp=sharing
We request 4 small commitments to be considered for our Volunteer Vaccine List. The CPHD has approved our volunteers as eligible for a Covid vaccination. In addition to the sign up spreadsheet, please email ML Chambers: mlchambers@telluride.k12.co.us to be sure we have all your contact information.
Thank you for your support of our schools!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Si desea ser voluntario del Distrito Escolar de Telluride, nos encantaría contar con usted.
Haga clic en el enlace a continuación para conocer nuestras necesidades de voluntariado actuales:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IadfXW9YUIfJ2nXb1RCL0XvpluEb4Uk4g1suSfKY1kw/edit?usp=sharing
Solicitamos 4 pequeños compromisos para ser considerados para nuestra Lista de Vacunas para Voluntarios. El CPHD ha aprobado a nuestros voluntarios como elegibles para una vacuna Covid. Además de la hoja de cálculo de registro, envíe un correo electrónico a ML Chambers:mlchambers@telluride.k12.co.us para asegurarse de que tengamos toda su información de contacto.
¡Gracias por su apoyo a nuestras escuelas!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
haga clic aquí para la carta en español
February
28, 2021
Dear TSD Families,
It is hard to believe
that we are already through February. It was exactly on year ago that I
left Telluride to return to Vermont after spending a week here interviewing,
and accepted the offer for the Superintendent’s position. While it has
been a different year than I expected in so many ways, I have zero regrets. I
am thrilled to be here, I am proud of what we have accomplished under trying
circumstances, and I am excited for what the future offers for
opportunities.
This will be a long
message, as I want to touch on many things related to our continued transition
to lower metrics, and look ahead to the spring and beyond. Additionally,
I will not include all of the data charts I have shared for the past several
weeks, but anticipate after this week they will be available on our website and
linked in my communications.
Our plan for this
week:
- Grades
K-6 will remain in-person.
- Grades
7-8 will continue in hybrid, with more students having the opportunity to
be in four days every week.
- Grades
9-12 will have Gold (and High Priority) students in M, T, Th, F, with more
students qualifying to attend both weeks.
- We
will again start this week with no classes in quarantine (unless something
changes tonight).
- For
this week’s student COVID test schedule go to: http://tellurideschool.org/covid-19.
- We
appreciate your continued flexibility should any unforeseen circumstances
occur.
Each Principal will continue to provide operation
details for their building. Do not hesitate to reach out with any
questions.
We continue to demonstrate that we can operate
safely, and as the numbers in the county continue to decrease we will look at
how we can get more students into TMS and THS. Last week was our biggest
week to date for testing. We tested over 400 students and staff with ZERO
positives, although we did learn of two students who tested positive with the
county outside of our testing. There is currently a lot of discussion
across the county regarding the 6-foot recommendation from the CDC, how that
differs from the World Health Organization recommendation of 1 meter, and how a
lot of schools have operated successfully with less than 6-foot distancing at
all times. This is something we will explore in the upcoming weeks as our
staff move toward “fully protected” status two weeks after their second vaccine
shot. With all of that said, I want to acknowledge that we will still
have students at all grade levels who will learn 100% remotely for various
reasons.
The Telluride
Education Foundation continues to support our staff, students, and families in
this most unique year. This Thursday at 5:30pm. TEF is offering “Pandemic
Parenting: Helping our Kids Thrive in Their Digital World”, with author Devorah
Heitner. For more information and to register, go to: https://tellurideeducation.org/event/pandemic-parenting/.
As you may have heard,
the discussion regarding standardized testing is still ongoing at the federal
and state level. The Biden Administration announced last week they will
not accept blanket waivers from states to “pause” testing, but will allow some
limited flexibility to states in test administration. The Colorado
legislature is currently considering a bill related to CMAS testing, and that
bill now needs to be modified at some level in response to the recent
announcement from the feds. CMAS (Colorado Measure of Academic Success)
is our state accountability assessment administered to students in grades 3
through high school. While several things are still unclear, here is at
least some of what is clear (or somewhat clear) at this point:
- The
test window is coming up fast! We would normally start testing in
mid-March and are still preparing to begin on March 22 if necessary,
although the test window end date has been extended, allowing us to delay
if we decide to.
- The
feds and the state may not come to any final decision until the very last
minute.
- Standardized
test data is in general valuable for many reasons, and this is a year we
certainly want to know how our students are doing, but the issues
associated with testing this year leave many questions about how valid the
data would be from testing.
- The
state is currently saying it will NOT be set up to test students
remotely. While the state is saying remote students can be given the
option to come test in-person, there are many questions about safety and
capacity issues related to this across the state.
- CMAS
administration is a huge effort, and in a normal year it disrupts the flow
of student learning in the spring. In a year where student learning
has already been challenged by remote learning, hybrid learning,
quarantines, and other safety protocols, many are arguing the time would
better be spend on instruction rather than standardized testing.
- While
some other districts have struggled with participation in CMAS, we have
worked really hard in this district to foster positive test participation,
as the results impact our accountability ratings. We do not want to
lose this momentum.
- Districts
have been explicitly directed by the state to not encourage families to
op-out of CMAS participation.
I hope you can see how
complicated this issue is. We will keep you updated as we get more
information.
We are
beginning to plan for summer programming. This may look similar or
different to the programs we have provided in the past for students. We
have all been hearing a lot about the “COVID slide”, but do not want to operate
from a deficit mindset. We want to think about what we can do that best
meets the needs of our students academically and socially after this most
unusual year. This could look like a three to five-week program soon
after this school year ends or soon before next year begins. There are
again many unknowns here that we are working to figure out, and we know summer
planning is underway for everyone, so we will continue to keep you posted as
things develop.
The
Northwest Colorado Council of Governments and Colorado Association of Ski Towns
has commissioned a study covering six Colorado mountain counties, including San
Miguel County. The purpose of the study is to help answer the question "Is
the COVID-migration here to stay and, if so, how will housing and services be
impacted?” As part of the study, an online survey of
long-time, new, and part-time residents will be conducted to understand their
plans and priorities. This research will help communities understand and
plan for service and infrastructure needs. Look for a separate email with
a link to the 10-minute survey in the coming days.
We have heard
questions and concerns regarding the TMHS volunteers and vaccination. We
have put out requests throughout the year for volunteers as we have needed
them. As we have ramped up the number of students in the building, and
ramped up extra-curriculars, we have needed more volunteers recently. A
few weeks ago, San Miguel County Public Health informed us that school
volunteers qualified for vaccination under the current phase, so we let our
volunteers know and provided contact info to SMCPH. In no way was there
any intention on our part to use vaccination as a “carrot” for
volunteers. We needed volunteers, and volunteers qualify for vaccination;
those are simply two connected facts. We put a minimum on the number of
“shifts” required to volunteer, because it takes work on our part to get
volunteers up to speed. If you are interested in signing up to volunteer,
please use the link below: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IadfXW9YUIfJ2nXb1RCL0XvpluEb4Uk4g1suSfKY1kw/edit?usp=sharing
A huge THANK YOU to
all of those who have volunteered since the beginning of the year. This
has helped us operate as safely as we have!
As we bring more
students into school, our bus ridership is also increasing. I want to
make sure everyone understands the details around this. We started the
year with a limit of one student per seat (with the exception that siblings
could sit together in a seat) in alternating rows with an empty row between
each occupied seat. This meant our buses with a normal capacity for 84
students was limited to 14-18 students per bus. This was a more
conservative approach than state and federal requirements dictated, but not
knowing what we know now we erred on the side of caution. As our bus
ridership has increased, we have been filling in the empty “in-between” rows
with additional students and will continue to do this. We will stay
within all state and federal requirements in doing this. To date our most
“crowded” routes have increased to approximately 30 students on the busiest
days, which is still less than 40% of normal capacity. Please reach out
with any questions or concerns you night have about this.
Based on feedback I
have heard, I wanted to clarify the difference between requirements for
EXPOSURE versus SYMPTOMS.
- If
anyone in a household is SYMPTOMATIC, all household members should stay
home until either:
- (1) the symptoms clear within 24 hours (fever, new or
worsening cough, or shortness of breath or difficulty breathing) or 48
hours (sore throat, runny nose or congestion, muscle or body aches,
headache, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea); or
- (2) the symptomatic household member gets a negative
COVID test if symptoms did not clear within the times above.
- If the symptom is new loss of taste or smell, then the
symptomatic individual is presumed positive and all household members
should quarantine.
- If
someone in the household is EXPOSED and therefore defined as a close
contact but NOT symptomatic, household members are no longer required to
stay home (although they certainly can as a measure of extra caution).
Metrics and
Operation Status:
- The
SMC Positivity Rate is currently at 2.1%, and the SMC Incidence Rate is at
183.5 per 100,000. The county will move from Orange to Yellow at
midnight tonight.
- To
see the CDPHE COVID-19 Dial Dashboard go to:
- To
see the SMC Dashboard, go to:
Our
latest district testing data is shown below:
|
COVIDCheck
|
MicroGenDX
|
Total District Positivity Rate
|
Week
|
Staff
Positive
|
Staff Total
|
Staff %
|
Student
Positive
|
Student
Total
|
Student %
|
Jan 4
|
3
|
133
|
2.26%
|
3
|
135
|
2.22%
|
2.24%
|
Jan 11
|
3
|
118
|
2.54%
|
1
|
258
|
0.39%
|
1.06%
|
Jan 18
|
1
|
105
|
0.95%
|
0
|
264
|
0.00%
|
0.27%
|
Jan 25
|
0
|
118
|
0.00%
|
1
|
230
|
0.43%
|
0.29%
|
Feb 1
|
1
|
111
|
0.90%
|
0
|
184
|
0.00%
|
0.34%
|
Feb 8
|
2
|
108
|
1.85%
|
2
|
240
|
0.83%
|
1.15%
|
Feb 15
|
0
|
105
|
0.00%
|
0
|
158
|
0.00%
|
0.00%
|
Feb 22
|
0
|
82
|
0.00%
|
0
|
317
|
0.00%
|
0.00%
|
Since
we have had no new quarantines in two weeks I am leaving that table out of this
week’s communication.
Below is a revised
list of staff and students who we know have been positive, updated with new
cases from this week as well as with more information we found out about past
cases:
Group
|
Total
Known Positives
|
Staff
|
18
|
TES
|
11
|
TIS
|
17
|
TMS
|
12
|
THS
|
18
|
total
|
76
|
I attended
a training this weekend with several of our staff members, offered by
Tri-County Health Network and titled “Youth Mental Health First Aid”.
Many of our staff have taken this training previously, and the training will be
offered again in a few weeks for more staff members. While the course
touched on some extremely sensitive topics such as suicide, anxiety,
depression, and substance abuse, I was inspired both by what our staff bring to
the table in terms of their commitment and collective wisdom, and by the expert
facilitation provided by TCHN. This is not easy stuff, but it is so
important to the work that we do. I learned, among other things, that the
average age for onset of anxiety disorders is 7 years old. Inside or
outside a pandemic, attending to our children’s mental is critical to the
education we provide. I say not from a place of negativity but from a
place of recognition, hope, and commitment.
Thank you for your
continued support of our schools and our efforts this year. Please continue
to help our community move in the right direction by staying safe and healthy
and following The 5 Commitments.