Hello Superintendent Jenkins here with another community update.
First lets talk about COVID-19
As of Thursday afternoon, OCPS had 400 confirmed COVID-19 cases since August 21st.
136 employees, 258 students and 6 vendors or visitors.
There are also 261 active quarantines, 49 employees and 212 students.
The Florida Department of Health has once again reminded us that contact tracing
connects several cases to an activity or gathering in the community.
Please be extremely cautious when it comes to social events or gatherings
for children as well as adults.
During this pandemic, remember, exposure to the virus does not only impact
the individual, but can impact many others they come in contact with
including employees and those who are especially vulnerable due to age or health issues.
Practicing social distancing, wearing face masks
and frequently washing our hands can help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Regarding our shift to face to face instruction
We saw the return of 15,000 of our students who were previously on LaunchEd@Home platform.
Accommodating that kind of shift took heroic efforts by our principals
administrators and teachers.
I want to thank principals for their tireless efforts to accommodate the changes
more than we would typically deal with during this time of year.
We are also grateful to our teachers, many of whom had to return
to working in the school building as the registrations demanded.
I know many students and parents experienced some discomfort
with the changes, so we also appreciate your indulgence.
We are now hosting about 42% of our students in the Face to Face model.
Remember, all of the OCPS safety measures that have been
in place such as wearing face masks and social distancing
remain in place until further notice.
And those on LaunchEd@Home are expected to
diligently attend to their learning objectives.
Winter Sports
We are currently consulting on how we can keep our student
athletes who participate in winter sports as safe as possible,
while also protecting the general population.
COVID-19 testing will continue for high-contact sports,
such as basketball, soccer, wrestling and potentially more.
At this time, there are no plans to cohort those athletes due to logistical complications.
We simply could not get it done.
We will, however, expect the highest level of compliance to all
safety measures by teams, individual athletes and coaches.
So you're probably wondering, what can we expect for the remainder of the school year?
We are all hopeful that no additional changes will be required this year.
But here is what we know: The Commissioner’s emergency
order that allowed for our LaunchEd@Home instruction
expires in December at our semester break.
The Florida Department of Education has indicated that some further instruction
can be expected by mid-November,
so we wait to see if there will be any extension of that option.
It is not a local decision.
At that same time, we may receive indications about funding for the majority of districts
that are below their projected enrollment.
OCPS is among those districts who may have their budget negatively impacted
during the second semester.
We will keep you posted.
Thanks for listening.