First day of school - part 2

So, the girls' school voted to have them go back to school in person starting on October 20th. We struggled with what to do - should they stay remote or should we send them to school? We really only thought it would work if they could be in the AM session. Since we still need to keep our nanny, it would really not be good to have her do a split schedule if the girls were in the afternoon school session. So, we emailed the principal and asked nicely :) to be in the AM session. Of course, nothing was guaranteed and requests were not being taken, so we just crossed our fingers. Luckily, the girls got assigned the AM session! But, we had to change teachers. Their current teacher got moved to teach kindergarten and we were moved into Ms. Sullivan's class. Morgan was a little apprehensive about having Ms. Sullivan because she had heard some "stories" from former students in the past during Champions that made her scared. Kids!

School is a little different right now. The girls go from 8:20 to 10:50 each day. Every morning, I get an email at 5:00 AM asking me to self-certify that the girls have no COVID symptoms (fever, runny nose, etc). It's an online form that has to be filled out by 7:45 AM. If I forget, the girls can't go in the classroom and have to start their day off at the nurse's office getting certified by her (who then calls the parents as well). There is also some paper form I can fill out and send with the girls, but I think they still have to go through the main door and see the nurse before entering their classroom.

"First" day of school - in October - in winter coats!

Once they get to school, they enter through the outside door to their specific classroom. There are red dots on the ground that show them how far they need to stand apart from each other. Someone is at the door with the list of pre-self-certified students and a thermometer. They take each child's temperature before entering the classroom. They have taken them on the forehead, the wrist and behind the ear. Once they are cleared, they are allowed to go into the classroom. Each desk is 6 feet apart. All of their supplies they will use for the day are in their backpacks (which weight a TON!).

So, of course, the day before the girls were to be back in person, the state of Illinois raised the level of COVID cases to "substantial". This means that restaurants are no longer supposed to serve people inside in person. Originally, our school district had said that we would be fully remote if the level was "substantial", but they came out yesterday saying they would re-evaluate each week we continue to be at "substantial" and look at the positivity rates and then decide if the kids could be in school in person. We'll see how long this lasts.