March 12 2021

Hello, I'm Cathy Washer, Superintendent of Lodi Unified School District with some updates for you. We are looking forward to welcoming our students back to our school site. We're eager to start in person instruction as I know you are as well on March 29th. If we're in the purple tier will start with elementary grade students and targeted populations in the higher grade such a special day class students. Parents/guardians will be notified if this applies to your child.

On March 29, if we're in the red here, all students in all grades will start the hybrid model. School sites are communicating with our parents/guardians and students about their group assignments A or B and the campus schedules. Please remember that this is a modified schedule and not the same schedule that we were on before distance learning at this time. There's also still the option for all distance learning.

As you may know our county has earned one week credit towards the red tier and that's great news. And this is because two of our criteria fell into the orange numbers. So, we were given that one-week credit and we will need one more week before we can be officially assigned to the red. If next Tuesday, we meet the criteria, if we maintain or improve, we will be designated as red tier and then we will be able to share with you officially that all students in all grade levels will be back.

Also, the state has added a new criterion for tier assignment based on the vaccination numbers in high priority neighborhoods; there about 8 million people in these areas. And if the state vaccinates two million, the adjusted case rate criteria needed to reach that red criteria, that red tier, is relaxed from 7 to 10. The state has already vaccinated over 1.8 million. In this group it is possible that they could reach that two million soon. There's a very strong possibility that our County will be designated red next week, but we're going to eagerly wait for next Tuesday's announcement.

We ask that you help keep everyone healthy at school when you return by monitoring your child's health every morning before sending your child to school. Please check for COVID-19 symptoms each day and keep your child home if your child is sick. If your child is ill at school, they will contact you to come pick up your child and we want to make sure that we don't have people who are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms on our campus.

We do expect all staff and students to follow the state requirement for masks and we will be enforcing that. Please make sure that your contact information is up to date. We want to make sure that you get all the information you need, all of the information from the district as well as the site, so if there are any changes to your information, please let your school site know.

We also ask for your understanding and that this is another new endeavor for all of us and there will be challenges. As we start, we will do everything possible to address issues as they come up. We appreciate our staff for all their dedication to prepare and we thank you for your cooperation. We will keep you posted with any updates.