Our Commitment to Health & Safety
Underlying all we do during the pandemic is our commitment to the health and safety of our students, faculty, and staff. Using recommendations from the CDC, state, and local officials we will minimize the possible spread of the virus while still ensuring teaching and learning can continue.
Our community had banded together under several planning teams to do our best to plan for the coming year's unknowns. See the plan in What to Expect.
Four Guiding Principles
Four guiding principles have especially helped to inform our decisions as we plan for the 2021-22 school year. These principles speak to our Mission and Values. They are also aligned with what we have learned from our experience with distance learning this spring and the feedback we have received from our community.
Health & Safety
Our highest priority is the health and wellbeing of our community. We want to provide a healthy environment for our students, faculty, staff, and families. All decisions we make will be focused on maintaining a healthy learning environment, where we all feel safe.
Flexibility
Developing a plan for instruction during a global pandemic calls for flexibility in order to respond to external factors beyond our control. In our planning this summer we wanted to prepare for both on campus as well as online instruction. Our goal is to create a learning environment that can adapt to future coronavirus infections, which would allow us to pivot from on campus to online as well as from online to on campus.
Patience
No one knows exactly how this global pandemic will play out. Using the best scientific evidence available to us, we have created a plan for instruction with the best intentions for our community. We ask for continued patience from our community as we navigate these unchartered times.
On-Campus Instruction
Overlake students as well as our faculty and staff long to return to campus and to be with one another rather than in a Teams or Zoom meeting. Returning to campus needs to be done so that we are all confident that it is safe to do so. This means that the number of COVID-19 cases in King & Snohomish Counties are at levels that allow us to move to a full Phase 3 of Governor Inslee's Safe Start Phased Reopening Plan.