(December 31, 2020) Last night, Colorado Governor Polis announced that he was asking Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to move Level RED counties back to Level Orange on OVID-19 dial as cases decline, effective Monday January 4, 2021.

At this time, we are still waiting for an announcement from Boulder County on whether they will comply with the Governor’s request. In the previous re-opening back in May 2020, Boulder County delayed re-opening by about 10 days.

We just want to give everyone a heads-up that a dial-down event is coming and that means changes to how we view the enrollments of students and how we treat teachers’ employment:

Back in November 2020, we sent everyone an email that had the following paragraph:

Flexibility to Come Back to School At Pandemic Dial Level Red

• As long as Boulder County Pandemic Dial Level stays at RED, parents have the freedom to keep their children at home. No tuition will be charged and you do not need to worry about losing your spot at school.
• During the same time and by the same token, teachers have the flexibility to stay home and do not have to worry about losing your job. School will support applications for unemployment benefits if we do not need you at school in the meantime. If the school needs you at work and you prefer to stay at home, obviously we cannot support your application.

When Boulder County dials down to Level Orange, these will be the changes:

1. For parents, the regular rules that are stipulated in the Parents Handbook kick in. We will start to charge you tuition when the Pandemic Dial Level is at Level Orange, as early as Jan.4, 2021. If we do not have enough teachers coming back, we will have to turn away some children or even close some classrooms and we will not charge you tuition. As of now, we have enough staff to open each classroom.

2. For teachers, the regular rules that are stipulated in the Teachers Handbook kick in. All teachers are asked to report back to work when Pandemic Dial Level is at Level Orange. Teachers who refuse to come back to work are asked to submit resignation and will not be qualified for unemployment benefits. When they decide to come back again at a later time, they will have to re-start their employment status clock. School may decide some teachers do not need to come back to work right away based on workload.

3. To all parents and teachers, we are still opening from 7:30am to 4:30pm for now until things stabilize and we have at least two teachers in most classrooms, then we can switch to 7:30am to 5:00pm. If we have enough teachers willing to come back, this could happen really quickly.

Thank you and best regards,

Happy New Year to Everyone!