The Doors of St. Cassian Open to Welcome Students
We are so excited to announce that the doors of St. Cassian School opened for in-person instruction this September! After a full Spring and Summer of preparation, we eagerly welcomed our students back to school for the 2020-2021 school year. Since our move to remote learning last Spring, our school has been professionally sanitized and many technology upgrades have taken place to create a safe environment where staff and students come together to learn in-person and remotely, simultaneously through a blended learning instructional model.
In alignment with the guidelines for school reopening provided by the CDC and New Jersey Department of Health, several important steps have been and continue to be taken to promote the safety of our school community as we engage in-person instruction this Fall. In particular, students have been separated into 3 groups to meet social distancing requirements. Two of these groups are participating in a blended learning model of instruction, which includes both in-school and remote instruction, while the third group is electively participating in 100% remote learning. Classroom furniture, such as student desks, has also been arranged to facilitate social distancing. Additionally,
- A professional cleaning company has been hired to clean and sanitize the building before the students return in September and between groups of students at the end of each week throughout the school year.
- Clorox 360 Deep Sanitization equipment has been purchased and is being used by our custodial staff to sanitize the school at the end of each school day.
- HEPA filters have been installed in the school’s air filtration system and professional grade air purifiers are have been purchased for every classroom and office.
- Established routines for ongoing cleaning, disinfecting and sanitizing of high touch areas are implemented throughout the school.
- Hand sanitizing stations have been installed in each classroom and in several places throughout each hallway.
- Touch-free thermal scanners have been purchased and are used for temperature checks of all staff and students entering the school building each day. In addition, a Health and Wellness Pre-screening Form has been provided to each family for submission each morning their child(ren) are attending school for in-person instruction.
- Traffic patterns that support social distancing and unidirectional flow have been established.
- Floor decals and signage supporting healthy and safe practices, such as wearing a mask and washing/sanitizing hands, have been placed and posted in appropriate areas throughout the school.
- Two nurse’s rooms have been established, the regular nurse’s office and an isolation room for use if needed.
Additionally, the school has invested in several technology upgrades which allow classes to be live-streamed and support real-time interaction between those receiving in-person instruction and those connecting to class remotely. In particular,
- Webcams have been installed in each classroom to allow for high quality, real-time video streaming of each class to students connecting remotely.
- 50” screens that display the students connecting remotely have been installed and are used daily to facilitate interaction, dialogue, and collaboration between those connecting remotely and those present for in-person instruction.
- Wireless microphones have been purchased for each teacher to wear, ensuring the sound quality of each lesson being live streamed is crisp and clear, while the voices of the students connecting remotely are broadcast through the speakers of the classroom’s SmartBoard or Promethean Board for all who are attending class in-person to hear.
- Teacher laptops have been upgraded or replaced to meet the demands of live streaming and instruction simultaneously.
- Each class is also now equipped with a document camera so that print materials and demonstrations can be projected on the interactive whiteboard, making them easily seen by all students regardless of whether they are participating in-person or remotely.
These upgrades, coupled with our strong existing foundation in technology (e.g., Google Classroom, one-to-one deployment of devices, online textbooks and differentiated programs) and years of experience delivering remote instruction when circumstances have required the physical school building to close have and will certainly continue to support the effective delivery of the lessons our teachers work so hard to prepare for each day of instruction.
We are so happy to see our students back in class, both in-person and online! We look forward to the continued adventure of teaching and learning that awaits as the year unfolds!