Boston Public Schools has been in regular contact with Commissioner Riley and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on expectations for attendance with the shift to all in-person or all remote learning. The guidance requires that all students are scheduled in our attendance system for fully in-person learning or fully remote learning. Schools will follow the existing guidance for recording daily attendance, including: in-person present, in-person absent, remote present, or remote absent. Minimally, students should learn remotely in situations where a student is symptomatic or is deemed a close contact as part of contract tracing following a confirmed positive case of COVID-19. Students who are symptomatic, isolating, or quarantining who are enrolled as in-person but log in remotely will be marked as present.

Boston Public Schools is reviewing the new guidelines released on Friday, March 19, 2021 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which recommend schools maintain at least three feet of social distancing between students. We are proceeding with planning with schools and public health officials to determine how best to implement this new guidance.

We are planning to alter classrooms to allow for three feet of distancing between students, while following the guidelines to maintain six feet of distancing between staff and students, in shared spaces, and during meals.

We are conferring with the Boston Public Health Commission on the impact of three feet of distancing on contact tracing when there are confirmed cases of COVID-19 in schools.

Additional information can be found here.

BPS will continue to follow health and safety protocols while students and staff are in schools. These include mask wearing, hand washing, consistent cleaning throughout the day, COVID-19 testing for students and staff, and access to vaccines for all BPS staff members.

Five days of in-person learning will begin for students in grades K0 - 8  on Monday, April 26, 2021. We are working to determine the date when students in grades 9 - 12 will transition from hybrid learning to five days of in-person learning.

Families can request changes to their student(s) learning model with their school. Adjustments will be made upon confirmation from the school.

Students learning in-person will be in school on those days while students learning remotely will continue with online instruction. The regular cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing scheduled for Wednesdays will occur on Tuesday nights.

We are developing plans for when hybrid students in high school will transition to five days of in-person learning.

The final official day of school will be June 18, 2021, marking 170 days of learning.

The social distancing in classrooms will range between 3 and 6 feet, depending on the size of the classroom. Per recent DESE guidance, social distancing must be determined by measuring the edge of the seat to the edge of the next seat, side by side and front to back. Educators will have 6-foot workspace.

We will maintain 6 feet of social distancing during lunch, snack, and mask breaks.

Depending on individual schools, meal service will happen in different ways. In each, when students are eating with masks off, they will be 6 feet apart.

1. Classroom service: Meals will be dropped off/picked up and brought to classrooms. Disposable placemats will be available upon request to place on desks for students eating in the classroom. 

2. Cafeteria service: Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) will continue to run meal services in cafeterias. 

3. Tent service: FNS will not be providing meal service outside under the tents. Students will come to the cafeteria to pick up meals and go directly to the outside eating area. Inclement weather plans will be established.

4. Combination of Services: FNS recognizes there will be several schools that will combine the services listed above. Each plan will be reviewed to ensure proper staffing and safety protocols can be followed.

Regularly scheduled cleaning will take place each day. The additional cleaning, disinfecting, and sanitizing usually reserved for Wednesdays will occur after school on Tuesdays.

Yes, all students and staff planning to participate through in-person learning need to complete the home health screening each day before reporting to a school building. 

The Home Health Checklist is available on the BPS website in all 10 of the district’s primary languages: https://www.bostonpublicschools.org/Page/8427.

• No, pool testing is voluntary.
• If your child is involved in pool testing and the pool returns a positive result, yes a follow-up test is required. This may be through a rapid test administered by the school nurse or a member of the Health Services department or a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test through a local testing center.

If your child is identified as a close contact, a member of the health Services team will contact you and discuss guidelines which could include testing and/or quarantine.

If your child must quarantine, they can attend school remotely. Specific information about the length of guidelines is addressed on an individual basis.

• As BPS returns to 5 days of in-person learning on Mon, Apr 26, 2021, Transportation will communicate updated bus assignments to families of all students who are eligible for school bus service by Wednesday, April 21. 
• BPS will continue to follow state Guidance for students and staff riding the bus. Students and staff who ride a BPS yellow school bus will be required to wear a mask that covers their nose and mouth at all times (full memo). 
• Hand sanitizer and extra masks will be available on the bus. Windows will be kept open throughout the ride for ventilation. Buses will continue to be disinfected twice daily. 
• Consistent with the state’s updated guidance from February 11, 2021, capacity limitations and physical distancing requirements for elementary students on buses have been lifted. For middle and high school students, capacity limitations and physical distancing requirements are lifted except in districts with high community prevalence and amended to allow at least 2 students per bench.

• Bus monitors will be provided to all students who require them, in accordance with student IEPs. 
• In addition, we are deploying additional public health monitors on buses to help with student and driver safety protocols. 
• We continue to actively hire more permanent bus monitors in order to provide public health monitors on as many buses as possible.