D-Y School District Releases Final Draft Reopening Plan

Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School.

YARMOUTH – The Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District has released its final draft reopening plan for the 2020-21 school year.

“As we navigate our ‘new normal’, we are following the guidance and mandates received from the Commissioner of Education who is listening to infectious disease physicians, pediatricians, and other public health experts from the Massachusetts General Brigham Health System, the Massachusetts COVID-19 Command Center’s Medical Advisory Board, and the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics,” said Superintendent Carol Woodbury in a statement.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly support that ‘all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present at school.’”

The D-Y school system will follow two models for the upcoming school year.

Grades kindergarten through 7 will prioritize an in-person model.

Class-sizes will be reduced to accommodate for 6 feet of social distancing, with class sizes ranging from eight to 16 students.

Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School, which consists of grades 8 through 12, will prioritize a hybrid learning model.

To implement that, students will be spilt into two distinct cohorts that will attend school on an alternating day schedule.

Classes will be five periods per day of seventy minutes each in person.

Students identified with significant needs will participate in an in-person remote learning plan which will be held in a designated area in the building daily.

For students who are unable to return to in-person learning, whose parents choose remote learning, or in the event the school is closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak, the district will provide instruction to those students that is aligned with the same content and instruction as the in-person model.

District preschools will prioritize a hybrid model that will split the students into two cohorts, similar to the high school.

The Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District will require all students, staff, visitors, and vendors to wear masks that cover the nose and mouth on school grounds and in school buildings.

Exceptions will be made for meals, mask breaks, and medical exemptions.

The schools will also implement isolation rooms.

The district nurse will work with each school nurse and principal to identify an appropriate location for an isolation room in each school to be used if a student appears to have COVID-19 symptoms.

Staff and students with coronavirus symptoms at school will be separated from other students and staff and the isolation rooms will be used if deemed necessary.  

For the entire final draft of the reopening plan, click here.