COVID-19 Operations and Learning Plan

Contact your school site secretary directly:

Juan de Anza Elementary School: Susan Castellanos (scastellanos@wiseburn.org)
138th Street School: Kristian Forte-Hill (kforte@wiseburn.org)
Juan Cabrillo Elementary School: Laura Nilsson (lnilsson@wiseburn.org)
Dana Middle School: Sarah Moulton (smoulton@wiseburn.org)

Wiseburn is currently operating in a Distance Learning Instruction Model. Early indications after talking to local and state medical experts suggest that some form of in-person schooling will likely not occur until the end of the 1st Semester (January 22, 2021).

Our goal remains to bring students back to campuses as soon as it is safe to do so. We have a framework with a flexible, five-stage reopening plan that we will invoke as the COVID-19 outlook improves.

However, we must follow all directives from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the state of California. Because of this, we are unable to fully reopen for in-person learning for general education (meaning, a fully in-person instruction plan for all students) since we are in the Widespread (purple) tier and have been since the beginning of the year.

However, beginning on November 2, we launched the first phase of our plan to bring in some students with specialized learning needs for in-person assessments.

Los Angeles County remains in the Widespread (purple) tier of the state's COVID-19 tiers, indicating a high test positivity and adjusted case rate. However, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has developed provisions in their guidelines that allow for small cohorts of students to be on campus. Under these provisions, no more than 25% of the normal school site population can be on campus at any one time and other health and safety requirements must be met. These practices were developed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 given what experts now know about the virus.

We will still be providing students, families, and caregivers with the choice to opt in or out for in-person education if and when we are able to provide it. In the event of a physical school reopening, families will have an option for either our in-person learning or our distance learning model.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health with support and guidance from the Board of Supervisors is offering a waiver opportunity whereby schools may bring back students only in grades TK - 2 upon approval by Public Health. The waiver is not automatically granted and no school may reopen for full TK – 2 in classroom instruction until Public Health has communicated approval.

The waiver program is subject to the following limitations:

• Up to 50 schools will be granted approvals each week; additional schools may be approved in a given week if there weren't 50 approvals each of the prior weeks.
• Prioritization for all slots will be given to schools with higher percentages of students qualifying for Free or Reduced-Price Meals (FRPM).
• The 50 schools per week will be equally distributed between the five Supervisorial Districts.

Wiseburn is applying for the waiver.

At this time, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health does not offer waivers for these grade levels. The waivers intend to prioritize younger learners who may have the most difficulty in adjusting to a distance learning model of instruction.

Refer to the Contact section below to see if there's a specific person who may be able to best answer your question. Otherwise, send an email with your question to communication@wiseburn.org.