MBS administrators update board on school reopening
The Mountain Brook Board of Education held its regular meeting on Monday, Aug. 10, and discussed the system’s reopening plan for the fall in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Dicky Barlow, the superintendent of Mountain Brook Schools, announced no significant changes in the plan.
But the Aug. 10 meeting still had a purpose, Barlow told the board.
“While we don’t have any major changes to the reopening plan, we felt like it's always good to continue to communicate our plans so people can digest it and understand it a little more clearly,” he said.
The pandemic “changes everything,” Barlow said. “Essentially what we have had to do the last few months is to remake our whole school system in every manner.“
MBS administrators also updated the board on progress made by teachers and other school staff to get ready to safely handle the return of students, whether those students exercise the tradition option and attend school in person or take the virtual option of distance learning.
Teachers and administrators have been working at the schools since August 3 to prepare for the influx of students, Barlow said.
About 300 students have chosen to exercise the virtual option, said Missy Brooks, the MBS director of instruction and special education.
There will be virtual teachers and virtual liaisons at the junior high and high school levels, Brooks said.
The liaisons can assist the teachers by checking in regularly with students, monitoring virtual attendance and serving as a connection between the teachers and the students, she said.
Teachers also began training this week in the use of the new Schoology learning platform, which can help facilitate online learning.
For example, “teachers can link their Google Drive to this or their One Drive to this and have all their resources that are easy to share for our virtual students,” Brooks said.
Amanda Hood, MBS director of student services, updated the board on preparations at the schools related to wellness and operation.
She said that the daily symptom check tool that MBS developed for use each morning by students and staff is now available on all of the websites for the district and the individual schools as well as the app.
“We already have people responding, and that seems to be working just fine,” Hood said.
She reiterated that MBS will require all persons on campus to wear cloth facial coverings that cover the nose, the chin and the sides of the face.
“It is hard for anybody to wear a mask all day long, so our teachers will be very intentional about planning mask breaks where we go outside, we space out, we take our masks off so that everybody can have a little bit of a break from that,” Hood said.
Teachers and administrators are also working hard to plan for social distancing in the schools, Hood said.
Barlow announced on July 30 that students in junior high and high school will attend school according to an alternating plan to reduce the number of people in the buildings on the same day.
In addition, administrators are also “looking at traffic patterns where students naturally face in one direction and to avoid those traffic jams that happen at entrances of hallways,” Hood said.
Hood said that school nurses continue to get “a large amount of training” in how to handle situations related to COVID-19.
Quarantine areas are being set up in the health rooms at schools to provide a place to evaluate students or staffers who begin to feel sick, she said.
As she mentioned July 30, Hood said that lead nurse Sandra Overstreet will serve as the COVID coordinator for the district.
Overstreet “will talk directly to the Jefferson County Department of Health and follow up on every case and be the point person for our school nurses,” Hood said.
Hood also described the protocols to be followed by the schools in dealing with students or staffers who start showing symptoms of COVID-19 or even test positive.
Look for updates and additions to this story later.