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NEW ORLEANS — NOLA Public Schools will begin opening as planned on Jan. 4, including in-person learning for students. The District will continue to monitor the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and keep open and constant lines of communications with our schools and health advisors.

“I am hopeful our families, students and staff stayed safe during the holiday break, but now is not the time to let our guard down,” said Superintendent Dr. Henderson Lewis, Jr.

“Keeping our students in their classrooms is essential to their getting the best educational experience possible, so let’s stay vigilant going into 2021 for all their sakes.”

Schools should continue to follow the COVID-19 safety guidelines laid out in the Roadmap to Reopening, which can be found at the NOLA-PS website, nolapublicschools.com. NOLA-PS will remain in constant contact with state and local health experts and make changes that best serve the school community.

For example, NOLA-PS has reviewed the Louisiana Department of Health’s newest quarantine guidelines and has recommended to our schools that the quarantine period for asymptomatic individuals can be reduced to 10 days from 14.

Testing for COVID-19 remains robust throughout the city, and NOLA-PS will be applying additional resources in January to continue to provide that service to our staff and students.

NOLA-PS also will continue to track the data and report it weekly to the public through our COVID-19 Tracker every Monday for as long as necessary.

The next update to the tracker will occur on Monday, Jan. 11.

The data included in our COVID-19 Tracker reflects self-reported cases from our schools and provides the real-time impact of the pandemic in our school community. The goal is to provide teachers, staff, students and parents with information that can help inform decisions they make for themselves and the NOLA-PS family.

The District has options it can exercise to help mitigate the number of cases within our school community before any large-scale return to distance learning. They include restricting extracurricular activities, reducing the number of grades served with in-person learning, and reducing classroom size, transportation capacity, and group maximums.

NOLA-PS will continue to prioritize in-person learning, in coordination with our local and state medical experts, as it offers a myriad of advantages, according to the CDC:

●        Provide safe, supportive learning environments for students.

●        Provide critical services that help meet the needs of children and families, especially those who are disadvantaged, through supporting the development of social and emotional skills, creating a safe environment for learning, identifying and addressing neglect and abuse, fulfilling nutritional needs, and facilitating physical activity.

●        Reopening schools creates an opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and the future of one of America’s greatest assets—our children—while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families.