The Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School Board unanimously approved the school district’s reopening plan for the upcoming school year during a special called meeting Thursday.
The plan, which will also be uploaded to the district’s website, www.glcsd.org, details how the district will handle in-person classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Students are required to attend classes in person beginning Aug. 5 — the first day of the school year — in their school uniforms.
Students, staff and faculty and visitors will be required to wear face masks inside the district’s buildings as well as practice social distancing.
Other safety protocols will include conducting daily temperature checks and health screenings for all arriving students and staff, providing hand sanitizer stations in each classroom and serving meals inside the classroom — rather than the cafeteria — or outside if the weather permits.
Under the plan, students will stay in the classroom with the teachers rotating between classrooms as much as possible. Within a classroom, seats will be arranged in order to provide social distancing; in areas where that is not possible, protective shield barriers will be erected between student seating areas.
Isolation spaces, separate from a school nurse’s office, will also be created to provide a space where students who do not pass a health screening or become ill with COVID-19 can stay while waiting to be picked up. Students and staff are also required to stay at home and self-quarantine if they or anyone they live with has tested positive for COVID-19.
Face masks will be required for students and drivers on bus rides, and social distancing will also be implemented, with the buses being cleaned and disinfected between and after each route daily.
Should there be a confirmed case of COVID-19 in a school building, the district will notify and work with the Leflore County Health Department, notify students, staff and parents and encourage cooperation from these parties in order to conduct contact tracing.
Dr. Mary Brown, the district’s superintendent, said the plan may be updated should the COVID-19 situation change.
In other business, the school board unanimously voted to allow Greenwood Little Theatre to use Davis Elementary School’s auditorium as a venue for performances for four years pending revisions made to a contract between GLT and the school district.
Although the contract still must be finalized, Walker Sturdivant, a GLT representative, answered questions from board members and described the plans.
GLT would like to use Davis Elementary’s auditorium because it has a larger space than GLT’s venue at 707 Sycamore Ave., which is also facing “daunting construction issues,” as Will Perkins, GLT’s president, explained to the school board during a work session last week.
Sturdivant told the board Thursday that in addition to using the school’s auditorium, his organization would also like to make improvements but has not decided what they would be.
He said the partnership would serve as a way for students and district staff to get involved with GLT’s productions. Mississippi Valley State University also would use the auditorium for events such as concerts, though Sturdivant said GLT would be using the auditorium more.
Board member Magdalene Abraham was receptive to the idea, saying a partnership could “create limitless possibilities,” such as a summer workshop for students.
- Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
