COVID Information & Resources 2021-22

Katonah-Lewisboro School District has a standing relationship with the Westchester County Department of Health in the event that testing is required for students or staff. We will collaborate with WCDOH for any required and relevant testing information and provide it to community members and staff, as needed, through our usual communication channels. KLSD is not authorized to provide COVID-19 testing in our school facilities.

Testing is readily available in our community. Students, staff, or visitors requiring COVID-19 testing should contact their health provider, a local urgent care, a federally qualified health center, or visit the New York State DOH website to locate a nearby testing facility.

 A list of testing sites can also be found on the WCDOH health website under the testing, results and treatment tab.

Students, faculty and staff can also call the NYS COVID-19 hotline at 1-888-364-3065 for assistance locating a testing site.

Katonah-Lewisboro School District will notify the State and County health departments, as well as our District’s medical director, immediately upon being informed of any positive COVID-19 test result by an individual within school facilities or on school grounds, including students, faculty, staff, and visitors of Katonah-Lewisboro School District

To assist the local health department with tracing the transmission of COVID-19, Katonah-Lewisboro School District has developed and will maintain a plan to trace all contacts of exposed individuals in accordance with protocols, training, and tools provided through the New York State Contact Tracing Program.

KLSD will assist with contact tracing by:

• Keeping accurate attendance records of students and staff members
• Ensuring student schedules are up to date
• Keeping a visitor log that includes date and time​, address and phone number, and where in the school they visited
• Assisting the local health departments in tracing all contacts of the individual in accordance with the protocol, training, and tools provided through the NYSContact Tracing Program
• Informing local health department of a staff member testing positive, regardless of county of residence.

For all contact tracing related to students, the DOH will require the name, address, and phone number of the student, as well as the name and phone number of the student’s parent/guardian.

If/when COVID-19 cases are discovered, in consultation with the local health department and our District’s medical director, Katonah-Lewisboro School District will do the following:

• Close or quarantine locations of potential exposure
• Clean and disinfect locations as necessary
• Provide DOH with information as required

Confidentiality will be maintained as required by federal and state laws and regulations. 

KLSD Staff will not try to determine who is to be excluded from school without guidance and direction from the local health department and our District’s medical director.

For more information related to other health and safety procedures, visit the Health and Safety section of our 2020 reopening plan.

In the event that it becomes necessary to close our schools, or have certain cohorts of students remain home, students would have access to the Remote Learning Model on all school days. School schedules would remain unchanged from those followed in the Hybrid Model or In-Person Model. Students would continue to have daily interactions with their teachers and peers on the same school-day schedules.

Synchronous interactions (connecting teachers and students in school with those at home in real time) will be scheduled for part of the class period or lesson, with other time devoted to independent work for students. During this independent time, teachers will conduct, remotely, individual and small group meetings to provide clarification, guidance and feedback on the application of skills, strategies or content previously taught. Depending on the nature of the independent work, students may log off their devices for any period of time when they are not meeting with the teacher.

Where necessary and possible, lessons will be recorded to allow access for students who cannot adhere to a synchronous schedule.

For fall 2021, every KLSD student (approximately 3,000 in all) will be issued a district-owned digital device to use in school and at home. These devices have built in cameras to support synchronous learning activities in a remote learning environment. Students will take devices home each evening, so that we're always ready for a potential transition. 

The district has also provided a common learning platform, Schoology, for all learners and teachers to conduct synchronous and asynchronous lesson activities in an online format. All KLSD teachers and administrators have district-issued laptops for use at school and at home for instructional purposes.

Off-screen experiences are also an important consideration. This is true for all students and especially for our youngest learners.  Our re-entry committee members have been discussing the kinds of materials they would want students to use on days of remote learning.  Although our teachers need time to make final decisions for their grades and subjects, the initial list includes independent reading books, math manipulatives, workbooks, art supplies, musical instruments and materials for some science labs.  When students are not with their teacher, there will be a mix of online and offline activities. 

The district has completed several projects to ensure a solid on-campus network infrastructure considering the growing need to broadcast lessons and provide content to students in a remote setting. The district technology team has upgraded network switching equipment to expand capacity and has grown the campus internet bandwidth to 1.5gb speeds from one gigabit this past school year.  These improvements will ensure teachers can broadcast from their classrooms and students can participate in synchronous learning activities with their teachers and classmates.

Our distance learning survey for families, administered in June of 2020, indicated that 91% of our families reported consistent internet access during the extended closure. The district is committed to the goals of the USNY Statewide Learning Technology Plan to ensure our students and faculty have access to devices and internet, both at school and at their places of residence.  We will work with students, families and faculty to ensure that every member of our school community has access to a device and adequate internet connectivity.

We have and will continue to reach out to families and educators who have limited, inconsistent or inadequate internet access and provide hot spots wherever possible. In many cases, hot spots will not work within our community because of inadequate cellular service in the area.  Our Director of Technology is working with internet providers and local leaders to lobby for increased cell coverage for the school community.