Lee County schools announce tentative reopening plan

On Wednesday, the School District of Lee County held a workshop where the superintendent and the school board discussed reopening classrooms to learning.

The district’s preliminary plan is to start reopening schools on Monday.

Before that, the district needs to make sure schools have working fire alarms and announcement systems, safe water and safe air quality.

The district is also trying to be sensitive to the students, staff and teachers. Before they get everyone back in the classroom, they’re hoping to have a teacher reunification day where teachers can spend some time, talk to each other, and talk about whatever trauma they’ve gone through with this storm.

Then they want to do the same thing for families to get them adjusted to where their new setting might be or what their old setting looks like now.

On Wednesday, the district would then open the following schools;

• Combined Schools
• Cypress Lake Middle School
• Paul Laurence Dunbar Middle School
• Early Childhood at James Stevens
• Early Childhood at Head Start

The combined schools are an effort to get students from schools that were heavily damaged back into a classroom.

One of the combined schools would have students from Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and Sanibel K-8 attend class at San Carlos Park Elementary. The district says that while the students will be taught in the same building, the schools will retain their identity and remain as separate classes.

Schools that sustained more damage, including Diplomat and Lexington Middle Schools, are tentatively scheduled to have students back in the building on October 31.

Students from those schools, and the Young Parent Education Program, can enroll in Florida Virtual Schools FLEX for a minimum of 14 days.

You can watch the school district’s workshop by clicking here or in the player below.