Dear Parents,

It has been a wonderful week of learning and reconnecting for our school community. While I had hoped we could all be together when the school year began, it was not to be. Sit has been truly wonderful having our ECE and Kindergarten bringing life back to campus, and seeing the wonderful faces of our elementary school over zoom.

I am sure there are still many questions about the wavier process and the current timeline for reopening the elementary school to in person learning. This past Friday Governor Newsom announced that California would be eliminating the County Monitoring System and instead would be adopting a leveled system called a Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Throughout this pandemic, these announcements often left local officials, school leaders, and all of you with more questions than answers, and it can take days or even weeks to get clarification on the implications of these announcements. I received a few questions about how the Blueprint for a Safe Economy might impact a return to campus timeline and school operations in general. Here is what we know:

• Los Angeles County is currently in the “Purple Zone” (of the new four colored tier levels). Levels are determined by the number of new daily cases per 100,000 and the positive test rate. As of this morning, Los Angeles County has 10.9 new cases daily per 100,000 and 6% positive testing rate according to the data provided by the state.
• At the Purple level, elementary schools cannot operate for in-person learning and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has decided not to consider waivers for any schools at this time. This decision to take waivers off the table was unexpected and a departure from everything we had been prepared for by the County through last week.
• Schools can consider reopening with substantial modifications when a county has moved to the “Red Zone” or Substantial Risk Level for more than two weeks. This would require less than 7 new daily cases (per 100,000) and a positive testing rate below 8%.
• When schools are permitted to open for on-campus learning meaningful modifications will be required including cohorts, mandatory masks, and daily health screenings, all of which we are prepared for and are outline in our Pandemic Plan. These guidelines are continuously evolving and we are watching them closely.

The current public health circumstance is unprecedented and the requirements change quickly. Often different local and state organizations publish conflicting or