Portal MHS

Bulloch County Schools received permission this week from the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, also known as Bright From the Start, to offer parents of children in the school district's state-approved Georgia Pre-Kindergarten sites the choice of either face-to-face or virtual learning. This choice mirrors the choice already offered to K-12 students. Pre-K will begin at all of the school district's 11 sites and 20 classrooms on August 17.  

Bulloch County Schools' Pre-Kindergarten personnel will contact parents of registered pre-k students to confirm their choice. Families will receive orientation information from Pre-K teachers prior to the start of school. Some Pre-K teachers will deliver a blended model of instruction that serves both face-to-face and virtual students in order to accommodate all of the program's 440 students. If parents need additional assistance, they can also contact their child's zoned school. 

Bright from the Start originally offered Georgia school districts three instructional models from which to choose: face-to-face; hybrid scenarios where children would attend school on select days or half days; and an all virtual option. However, with these scenarios, each Pre-K class site would have to select one instructional model, and all 22 students in a class would be required to be served in the same manner. 

"That approach did not meet the needs of our Pre-K families," said Teresa Phillips, Bulloch County Schools' assistant superintendent of school improvement.  "We submitted a different proposal to Bright From the Start that would allow us to provide Pre-K families a true choice of either face-to-face or virtual instruction."

On Friday, July 31, Bulloch County Schools will end its Feed-A-Kid program that was launched on March 17, in response to school closures due to COVID-19. There are no words to adequately thank our School Nutrition, Transportation, and School Social Work employees, or our faculty volunteers for their hard work and dedication to Bulloch County children. For the past 20 weeks, they have prepared and delivered a total of 485,256 meals. Each weekday they responded to families at up to 78 delivery locations to place meal bags packed with breakfast and lunch in the hands of as many as 2,900 children per day. As we end this program to transition into a new school year, please help us thank them for their service, and help us make families in need aware of these available school and community food resources.

• Meals at School: The first day of school is Monday, August 17. Breakfast and lunch are served daily.
• School Meal Prices: School meal costs for 2020-2021 are the following: Breakfast is free for all students; Lunch is $2.25 for elementary schools and $2.50 for middle and high schools; and the reduced cost for lunch is $.40 cents.
• Free & Reduced-Price Meals: Students who received free and reduced-priced meals last school year will continue to receive assistance until September 29. After that date a completed and approved 2020-2021 application for meal assistance must be on file.  The school district will distribute printed applications or families can complete the application online.
• School Meals for Virtual Program: For families who chose virtual instruction for their children, the school district is finalizing a plan for access to school meals. Details will be communicated soon.

Food drop for 1000+ families is Aug. 8

A food drop for more than 1,000 families will be held on Saturday, August 8, beginning at 9:30 a.m., at Julia P. Bryant Elementary School (421 West Main Street) in Statesboro. Boxes with a one-week supply of perishable and non-perishable food supplies will be distributed to any families in need. This will be curbside distribution only. For public health and safety, families are asked to remain in their vehicles and volunteers will load the food into your vehicle.  This food drop is a partnership with the Second Harvest/Feeding America Food Bank. A special thank you to Bulloch VOAD for coordinating this effort and to the Statesboro Kiwanis Club for their financial sponsorship to make it possible.  

Food Assistance

• Each Monday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. - Christian Social Ministries Food Bank, 31 North Zetterower Avenue, Statesboro.
• Each Saturday, 12 noon – 1 p.m. - Statesboro First United Methodist Church, 101 South Main, Statesboro.  Public Soup Kitchen. Meals available for pick up only at the rear of the church.
• Monday, July 27, beginning at 10 a.m. – at Portal City Hall.  Second Harvest Emergency Food Drop. Curbside distribution of food supplies.
• Pandemic EBT Benefits - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service is distributing Pandemic-Electronic Benefit Transfers (P-EBT) to eligible families. This began on Tuesday, July 28. The one-time funds of $256.50 per eligible child is intended to help prevent food insecurity for families with children. No application is necessary if you already receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds and if your child received free or reduced-price school meals last year. The funds will be automatically placed on your EBT card.  If you feel you are eligible and you did not receive funds or you are not on SNAP or school meal assistance, you can apply online. Bulloch County Schools does not determine eligibility for this program.  For more information or assistance, please call the Department of Family & Childrens Services' Customer Contact Center at 1-877-423-4746 or email customer_services_dfcs@dhs.ga.gov.

Food Pantries

• Compassion Christian Church, 831 Cawana Drive - 1st and 3rd Saturdays, 9 a.m. - 11 a.m.
• Eastern Heights Church, 23805 Highway 80 East, 2nd Saturdays, 9 a.m. - 11 a.m.
• Statesboro Food Bank, 400 Donnie Simmons Way. If anyone needs food or knows someone, especially elderly call 912-489-3663 between 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., to schedule a pickup of food.  Open Monday – Friday.
• Friendship Baptist Church, 4025 Friendship Church Road, Wednesdays, 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Bulloch County Schools will not host its traditional, in-person Open House events at its 15 schools this year. The Open House events that were originally scheduled for July 29, have been cancelled.

Instead each school will communicate to student families about their children's class schedules, teacher assignments, and other important orientation information for students in both the virtual and traditional instruction models.

We ask for your continued patience. Please note that each school will communicate this information at  their own pace, so monitor communications from your school over the next two weeks prior to the start of school. 

You can also continue to monitor daily updates to our frequently asked questions webpage.

Updated 7/30/2020:  Bulloch County Schools will open for the first day of school on Monday, August 17, with both a traditional face-to-face and a virtual option from which parents can choose for their children. The school district will continue its mission to ensure student success and schools will work with families to ensure engagement, learning,  academic skills mastery, and as many school experiences as possible.

"This is a plan that gets our students back to school, and it provides our families with options," said Superintendent of Schools Charles Wilson. "There will be more details to come, but we have provided two initial flyers that cover key points about the plans."

The return-to-school plan comes after 18 weeks of ongoing planning and re-planning to adapt to ever-changing global pandemic conditions and guidelines from seven separate national and state agencies and extracurricular associations. The Bulloch County Board of Education approved a recommendation from Superintendent Wilson on July 9, to provide the plan's two instructional model choices (traditional and virtual) for Pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade students. 

The Board also approved a two-week delayed start to the school year which was to have originally begun on August 3. The delay was to accommodate the Board's June 25, request to add an all-virtual option for all elementary grades to the school district's original return-to-school plan and to provide time to obtain parents' instructional model choices for nearly 11,000 students. By the end of July, the school district will contact all parents by email and by telephone if necessary, to seek their individualized instruction model choice for each child. A prompt response from parents will be critical to the school district's ability to deploy technology and faculty support to meet students' needs by August 17.

The superintendent chose to recommend the choice of a traditional instruction option after he sought community feedback and nearly 900 parents responded online and by telephone with questions and concerns. The superintendent hosted two community livestream sessions on July 2 and July 6 to provide an overview of planning efforts since March, current conditions, state guidelines, and answers to questions that covered more than 10 key areas. Nearly 1,000 people participated live, and more than 10,000 have viewed the sessions' videos.

Two flyers about the two instruction options are attached. These are also initial answers to some frequently asked questions:

Will the school district make announcements about COVID-19 positive cases among students and employees?

At the direction of the Department of Public Health, and to comply with federal privacy laws, the school district will make no mass announcements about COVID-19 positive cases that involve its students or employees. All contact tracing and notification will be done through the proper channels of the Department of Public Health. Medical information about any student or employee is also protected by federal privacy laws and will not be released by the school district.

Will schools close if there is a COVID-19 positive case(s)?
Schools are considered critical infrastructure. Short of a mandate by the Georgia Governor's Office to close schools, the school district will follow its established infectious diseases and illness protocols in that it will consult with the Southeast District Department of Public Health's guidance for any recommendations to close portions of a school, a school, or the district temporarily for public health. This is not a new protocol. It is the same protocol we follow annually during the flu season. Should schools close temporarily for a length of time, students in the virtual model would continue instruction in their online platforms, and students in the traditional model would be transitioned to distance learning with their Bulloch County Schools' teachers providing instruction online via Google Meets and other technology platforms of which students are already families.  The district would provide students Chromebooks and Internet resources as needed.

Will schools close to deep clean for COVID-19 positive cases?
The virus is relatively fragile, so standard hygiene practices, such as cleaning hands with soap and water, can help remove and kill the virus. According to the Department of Public Health, the virus can live and potentially infect a person for only two to eight hours after being deposited on a surface. Therefore, special sanitizing processes beyond the routine deep cleaning methods we've already enacted, including closing schools to further deep clean every surface in the building, are not necessary or recommended to slow a spread. 

Deep cleaning protocols for COVID-19 for our facilities happen every day and throughout the day in all school and office classrooms, common areas, restrooms, and other touch points. Custodian teams were trained in March on how to properly disinfect surfaces for COVID-19, and they have successfully implemented these practices since that time for our staff. This will continue when students return.

Will there be school Open House events?

Our traditional, large-group Open House events have been cancelled for this year and will not be rescheduled. Each school, at their own pace, will communicate to families about their child's class schedule, their teachers, and any other necessary orientation information.

Is gifted/QUEST instruction offered in the virtual instruction model?

Yes, gifted instruction is available through the virtual instruction platforms

• Designated gifted faculty in the school district are preparing pre-recorded lessons that will be embedded into the Edgenuity platform for middle school and SchoolsPLP for elementary school. 
• The school district will host its traditional fall and spring testing windows for gifted services.
• The district will use the curriculum resources that were already in use, so students will be familiar with them.  Both the traditional and virtual gifted programs will use Envisions and Noetic Math units for elementary gifted students and the Renzulli Learning System for middle school gifted students.
• If you have specific questions about certain Advanced Placement courses and offerings through Georgia Virtual School, please pose those questions directly to your high school counselor, who is the best expert to advise you on your individual child's academic journey toward graduation.   

May parents view sample lessons/instruction for the virtual program?

Sample virtual program videos are available on the school district's website for the Edgenuity platform for grades 6-12 and the SchoolsPLP platform for grades K-5 are posted.

For additional information about the logistics and day-to-day operations of both the virtual and traditional instructional models, please visit our COVID-19 Frequently Asked Questions webpage.

Bulloch County Schools established a dedicated Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) website on March 5. Please visit it here. It serves as an online resource for the following: 

• Answers to your frequently asked questions about district and school operations for the return to school and how to post your additional questions.
• Safety alert news
• Trusted national, state, and local public health resources and tips to help keep you healthy
• Information about print and digital resources to keep kids engaged in learning
• An up-to-date list of our free meal sites for children ages 0-18 through July 31