All students who are currently participating in In-Person Learning will return to In-Person Learning tomorrow, December 8, 2020. Tomorrow will be Day 5.
Please take time to review the information below each morning:
- Daily COVID Checklist – please review this checklist each morning with your child before sending your child to school
- Our Sent Home Sick Flowchart
- Our Sick Family Member Flowchart
As designated in Section 4, item 3 of the PA State Universal Face Coverings order, face coverings are required by the Order of the Secretary of Health. Please click here to read the full order.
Updated COVID Dashboard
The COVID Dashboard will be updated daily to include confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 reported to SFASD by individuals who attend school or work in Spring-Ford. Please click here to view the COVID Dashboard.
NEW – UPDATED BUILDING BASED 14-DAY ROLLING COUNT: Following Montgomery County Office of Public Health (MCOPH) guidance, the Rolling 14-Day positive count is one metric used to determine school closures. Together, SFASD and the MCOPH will monitor data as reported. All decisions will be made in coordination with the MCOPH. In addition to the data below, our mitigation strategies, timely case investigations and close contact notifications, linked transmission, municipality rates, and our cleaning procedures are all factors that are considered when considering a push to virtual and for how long.
Each building count will be updated daily. If a school closes due to an increase in confirmed cases, the Rolling Start Date would reset to zero. After a school reopens, the Rolling Positive Count will reset to zero, and a new Rolling Start Date will not be recorded until there is a positive case.
Example:
- December 8 – Building A closes for two days
- December 10 – Building A reopens to in-person learning
- December 14 – a new positive case is reported, reopening the 14-day rolling count
Information will be updated daily on the COVID Dashboard. Please click here to view the COVID Dashboard.
Should a school close for a period of time due to an increase in confirmed cases or due to a “functional shutdown,” a temporary transition to remote learning may be necessary. Parents are encouraged to have a back-up plan in place should schools close due to a Rolling Shutdown. Much like Snow Days, there may be short notice, though we will send a notification out as soon as possible.
Daily Transportation Update
Custers Garage, our transportation provider, may experience a bus driver shortage during the upcoming weeks. In the event of a driver shortage, available drivers will be asked to do “double runs.” Because of this, it is possible that some students may see a delay in bus pick up and/or drop off times.
Notification of Delays
Parents and students with cell phones should download the Bus Status App. The app will be updated each morning with all delays.
You can click here to check the overall status of all buses online.
Daily Bus Riding Procedure
- All students will be required to sit in assigned seats for contact tracing.
- Siblings will be required to sit together.
- Masks will be required at all times.
- Buses will be cleaned before morning and afternoon runs and will be disinfected each night.
Click here to learn more about the Bus Status app.
Attendance and Excuse Submission
- While the means by which attendance varies at each level, what is consistent is that if a student does not attend “in-person” but attends virtually/completes work synchronously, they are marked present.
- Students that are quarantined or parents choose to keep their child at home will be indicated as either quarantined or quarantined with a comment that the parent chose to keep a child home.
- Also, excuses may be submitted via email as long as the email is the parent/guardian email verified in Skyward. If a child is self-quarantined, the parents or guardians need to communicate with the building office.
SFASD and Contact Tracing
- Contract tracing will begin as soon as SFASD is notified that a student/staff member tested positive for COVID-19 or a student/staff member is symptomatic after a close contact to a confirmed case and student/staff member was at school/work while infectious. SFASD will contact school/work-related close contacts while MCOPH will conduct further contact tracing, including any personal contacts.
- SFASD's COVID Liaisons will notify Montgomery County Office of Public Health (MCOPH) immediately regarding positive cases of COVID-19 or symptomatic students/staff.
- MCOPH will only do contact tracing on personal contacts to a positive case if they fit the criteria for contact tracing during the surge and if they are a Montgomery County resident. Anyone that lives outside of Montgomery County will be contacted traced by their local Health Department, based on their own policies and procedures for contact tracing.
- The COVID Liaison will determine the student/staff member’s date when symptoms first began and/or the date of a positive COVID-19 test (date when specimen collected and date when test results were provided).
- The COVID Liaison will determine if the student/staff member had close contact with anyone. MCOPH defines “close contact” as “contact within 6 feet, with or without mask, for 15 continuous minutes or more” or “a household contact.”
- If Yes, the COVID Liaison will ask for the names of all individuals they had close contact with starting from 48 hours before symptoms appeared (or 48 hours before they were tested if no symptoms) up until their last day at work/school.
- The infectious period for COVID-19 starts 48 hours before someone’s symptoms appear. The infectious period for staff and students who test positive, but do not have symptoms, starts 48 hours before they were tested.
- The infectious period for COVID-19 starts 48 hours before someone’s symptoms appear. The infectious period for staff and students who test positive, but do not have symptoms, starts 48 hours before they were tested.
- If No, have the student/staff member continue to monitor for COVID-19 symptoms as usual, and follow MCIU guidelines.
- If Yes, the COVID Liaison will ask for the names of all individuals they had close contact with starting from 48 hours before symptoms appeared (or 48 hours before they were tested if no symptoms) up until their last day at work/school.
- The COVID Liaison will compile names and contact information of all close contacts to include on the MCOPH Close Contacts spreadsheet template. Information should include the Last date of exposure; First and Last Name; Date of Birth/Age; Phone Number; Email Address; Address; Primary and Secondary Guardian Name(s) and Phone Number (if student); Work/School.
- The COVID Liaison will notify all Close Contacts. Anyone identified as a close contact will receive a notification with additional instruction. Due to the nature of this communicable illness, you should continue to monitor for symptoms as always.
Beginning this week, we will be upgrading our notification system to include notifying classrooms of confirmed cases in kindergarten through 6th grade and buildings in 7th -12th grade. We will not be using any personal information or specific locations in our communication. Our close contact notification process will remain unchanged.
As a reminder, we are required to respect protected health information (such as a COVID-19 test result) and follow all applicable laws and policies for releasing employee health information. COVID Liaisons are prohibited from confirming or revealing the positive individuals' identity to parents/staff.