Phoenix Alhambra, Cartwright Elementary School Districts Shifting To 4-Day School Week To Address COVID-19 Concerns
The Alhambra Elementary School District that serves Phoenix and Glendale students is shifting to a four-day school week to address COVID-19 concerns.
Students will attend school in-person every weekday except Wednesdays. The district will use Wednesdays and the weekends to deep clean schools, said Superintendent Mark Yslas said in a Wednesday video posted on the district's Facebook page.
Students and staff may also be required to wear masks. Yslas acknowledges that the new safety measures may not be easy on everyone.
“We believe giving the teachers and those that work at the school sites a break on Wednesdays every week is going to be better for the stress and for their anxiety," he said.
The district will provide students with iPads that they can do assignments on for those Wednesdays. Distance learning options will also be available for parents who want students to stay home all week.
The Cartwright Elementary School District in Phoenix is also moving to a four-day school week.
Yslas also shared other ideas to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 during the school year which starts in August. Social distancing is one key strategy.
One idea the district is considering is color-coding each day green, yellow or red to mark the level of COVID-19 risk and indicate what protocols to follow in each school setting.
On yellow days, students may be allowed to participate in extracurricular activities like P.E. and music classes.
Things would look different on red days.
“That’s when kids stay in their classroom, they stay in their desk, they have lunch in their classroom, and we’re really strict on what we do," Yslas said.
Social distancing may also be practiced in school buses. Yslas said normally, there would be three students to one bus seat. But the district may limit seats to two students on yellow days, and one student on red days.
But there's other questions that remain unanswered. Yslas said the district is still working to determine whether it'll test students and staff. Yslas said the district may be required to implement some kind of health screenings, but it's unsure about what that will look. He said it would be difficult take temperature checks on a thousand kids, but it may be an option for red days.
