The Gilroy Unified District Board of Education approved a recommendation from the GUSD Reopening Planning Committee for a return to on-campus, in-person hybrid learning for elementary school students, in pre-kindergarten through fifth grades, beginning Thursday, April 15, 2021.

It is hard to believe that it has been a year since Santa Clara County schools closed to in-person learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  What a challenging year it has been, but as Valerie Jarrett once said, “Overcoming adversity not only makes us stronger, it makes us more hopeful.”  As COVID-19 case counts drop and more and more people are vaccinated, I choose to feel hopeful and optimistic about the future and possibly returning to a more normal life.

Reopening Plans presented at the March 18, 2021 GUSD Board Meeting

The two indicators that were established at the January 28, 2021 GUSD Board meeting for determining when recommendations would be made to the Board about reopening schools were recently met.  Santa Clara County moved into the Red Tier on March 3 and COVID-19 case counts have been consistently below 25 in Gilroy for over a week.

The Reopening Planning Committee has met twice in the past two weeks and has prepared reopening recommendations that I will share with the Board at the March 18, 2021 Board Meeting.  The agenda for this meeting is posted online here: http://bit.ly/GUSDBOEMarch18agenda should you wish to preview the recommendations.  Detailed descriptions of the in-person, hybrid learning and revised distance learning models will be presented at this Board meeting along with specific schedules for the three levels (elementary, middle and high schools).