Rationale: All Staff Meeting: Friday, March 27, 2020
COOP Requisitions: Thank you for your work on your COOP requisitions. Administrators will review your orders and get back to you with any questions or changes.
SAFE Work Environment: Thank you for your work to continuously create a safe workplace for you and your colleagues and for respecting health regulations in regards to social distance (6 feet) and crowd sizes (10 or less) in a room. Please make sure to continue to clean and disinfect your work areas. Custodians please make sure you continue to clean and disinfect common spaces, and restrooms on a consistent basis.
Food Service: Thanks to the food service and staff that assisted this week with our food service program. On Monday, our food service served 1,028 meals. On Wednesday, food service personnel told me the numbers increased each day this week. We are investigating ways to possibly add a backpack program utilizing food from the backpack and afterschool programs for weekend food support.
Work at District Office: We could use some support staff help at the district office if any staff is available. Please visit with your building principal if you are available. Tech staff will be working on putting a website together listing the nursing home inventory left in the building. We could use support staff help in getting this inventory completed.
Continuity of Learning: Thank you for your work to prepare the first "Continuity of Learning" packet for your students. I trust the work you send is meaningful and engaging. I also appreciate the work our special education department and ELL teachers and support staff contributed to these packets. Packets will be available for pickup on Monday and Tuesday during from 9:00-3:00. Any packets left will be sent home on Wednesday. We are now also required to file our "Continuity of Learning" plan with the Department of Education by next Friday.
First Packet Pickup: Each building has established a plan for an organized pickup of student packets. The breakfast and lunch program, has set an example of how this can work without actually having people in your building and making sure they respect social distance. The people passing out the packets will only place the packet on the table and the person picking up the packet will come in and pickup the packet while respecting social distance.
Parent Message: The district will send out a message notifying parents of the student homework packets to be picked up at their child’s school. If principals want to send out an additional message from your building after that initial message please let Mr. Droge know.
Self-Reporting System: In order to keep our workforce safe you must continue to follow self-reporting guidelines.
Have you recently traveled to an area of known local spread of COVID-19?
Have you come into contact (within 6 feet) of someone with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis?
Do you have a fever, cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, or sore throat?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, DO NOT COME IN. Contact the office, record your leave andwork from home. If you are working from home, please stay HOME.
Staff Leave: Remember, we do honor staff member needs for exercising leave for medical or child care needs. Because we have expanded the reasons for leave, all leaves at this time are basically permission to work from home, unless you are ill. If we call an ALL STAFF administrative leave your building office will enter that leave. You must enter all individual leaves into the system for each day you are at home. Please make sure you keep up with this report or you will not get credit for working.
Curriculum Work: During the school closure, we will be reserving Wednesdays for selected curriculum work. Dr. Gibbons will coordinate this work and schedule with your building principals.
NSEA information: We received some information from NSEA on safe working conditions in school buildings. At this time are limiting visitors or guests in our building. All of our health and safety guidance at this time is from East Central Health District. If guidance changes, we will be notified by East Central Health District Officials. However, I did send the NSEA request for a pandemic safety plan and the need to change our current work protocols to our legal council and to East Central Health for their response.
Lunch and Break Times: ALL STAFF, you have permission and are requested to take an hour for lunch and an hour throughout the day to keep yourself in good mental and physical health. It is tough to remain positive through this change and we need to reach out and make sure we are working to support a positive work environment while at school. Please refrain from posting your frustrations on facebook. There are no answers there. If you have questions or concerns, please visit with your administrator.
Federal Legislation: There is new federal legislation that may allow for expanded unemployment benefits and/or Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) benefits. We have no guidance at this time, but will share all options with employees as this become available.
Administrative Leave and Emergency Leave: Recent legislation created "Emergency Leave". This leave replaces "Administrative Leave". This leave is for 80 hours or 10 days (same as our present administrative leave). Our legal council shared this information with us on Thursday. So what ever we call it, we have the ability to use up to 10 days to support continued employment if there is a need to have staff work from home.
Governor, Education Commissioner, State Health Department: NET hosted a Townhall with these leaders on the state's response to COVID-19 in Nebraska. While we have not seen a drastic increase in positive testing in Nebraska, they anticipate we will see an increase over the next few weeks. Therefore, we need to keep working at practicing responsible behaviors both at work and at home. The commissioner stated that he did not see how we could return to regular school this spring, however, he stopped short of mandating this response. They also shared some thoughts about having groups of less than 10 in one room within the school or allowing employees to bring their children to school. While these options may be available down the road, we are not accepting this change until we get confirmation from East Central Health District for our region.
Responsible and Safe Behavior: Right now, the two safest places for you to be is in your home and at school. I am concerned with unnecessary travel and community movement outside of your workday and on the weekend. This not only puts your family at risk, but also increases exposure to our workforce. Please keep your movement outside of the workday at a minimum and, if necessary, please use good judgement to keep yourself with minimum community exposure. Have a great weekend.
