Dear Lemoore Elementary Families,

Happy New Year and welcome back! I hope that everyone had a wonderful few weeks spending time with family and friends. We are excited to start the second half of the school year.

In December students in grades Kindergarten - 3rd grade completed our Middle of the Year Dibels assessment to monitor student reading progress. We are happy to announce that most of our students have made good progress for the first half of the year.

With winter still upon us, please watch for information on possible foggy day schedule. Foggy Day is determined by the transportation department at Lemoore High School.

Please make sure to check the Covid protocol updates on the district website.

Some of the FAQ's are listed and answered in the next section of the newsletter.

Happy New Year,

Ms. Garcia

We ask that you please continue to complete your daily at home screening to assess the health of your child. If your child has experienced a positive COVID event, is identified as a close contact or exhibits symptoms, keep your child home and contact the school on Monday, January 10.

Please check the district website, https://www.luesd.k12.ca.us/page/covid-19-information for updated information. The screening form has been updated with the revised California Department of Public Health (CDPH) K-12 Guidance for schools regarding the timeline for isolation and quarantine periods. The timeline has been updated from 10 days to 5 days given certain criteria.

Finally, the district is working in partnership with the state to implement additional testing options with the availability of the Rapid Antigen tests which provide results within 15 minutes. As soon as these are received from the state we will provide further information. We will continue to offer the PCR testing for students.

If the student has not also had an exposure event, the student may return to school after developing symptoms when:

It has been 5 days since the start of the symptoms, their symptoms are completely resolved, and they’ve been fever free for 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medicine
OR
They receive a negative test after symptom onset (we are not currently accepting home tests), their symptoms are improving, and they’ve been fever free for 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medicine
OR
They receive a doctor's note clearing them to return to school regardless of testing status.

Please call the school and inform them of the exposure event. The school site nurse will be able to talk you through the quarantine procedure for your specific exposure event. Students identified as a close contact of an individual with COVID-19 in the same household or other personal event will be required to complete a 10-day quarantine from their last contact with that individual during the confirmed cases infectious period. During the 10-day quarantine, if any additional members of the household become positive, all household members (except the positive members) are to restart their 10-day quarantine based on the new positives’ symptom start date or test date. The student also has the option of decreasing the quarantine time by testing on Day 5 after last contact and returning to school on Day 6 after contact if the test is negative and the student has not developed symptoms. The nurse at your child’s school site will be able to walk you through the steps of this process and provide testing information.

There are several places you can take your child to receive COVID-19 testing: at school (see information below) or other locations around Kings County (please refer to this link under the testing section).

School Testing Procedure: You can make arrangements to have your child tested at the school for COVID-19. Please call the school for more instructions on testing at school. The school site will let you know what time and where to bring them.

We have two free testing options available and utilize the two different types of tests based on the protocol needs.

1. Rapid antigen testing: This will be new for us starting January 2022 once supplies are delivered. Our nurses have been trainined and certified to provide free rapid antigen tests with the Abbott BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card to students and staff at school with results in 15 minutes. Registration for this test is different than the registration you may have already completed for our PCR testing and we apologize for the incovenience of that. You may register your child under the student tab of this link: https://my.primary.health/l/eachone

   
   

2. PCR Testing: This is the same testing we have provided so far this school year through the COLOR platform with CDPH's Valencia Branch Lab. We use this testing for our staff weekly testing requirement and to meet the modified quarantine or test-to-stay student requirements of the CDPH School Guidance. This is a moleclular test that takes 2-5 days to receive results. This service is free and confidential. You will need to register your child only once before testing at our school location with this link or QR code: https://home.color.com/covid/sign-up/start?partner=1663974students

• As a reminder, PLEASE do not drop off or pick up your child in the middle of the parking lots. This is especially important in the Jefferson lot as the buses are being blocked. If you are pulling into the parking lot, please park your vehicle.
• Please pull to the yellow curb to pick up and drop off students. Students should not be going into the driving lane to get into a vehicle.
• Please make sure to use the marked crosswalks.

We are currently working on adding sports back into our schools for our 5th & 6th grade students. More information to come.

• January 11th - Board Meeting @ 7:00 pm
• January 17th - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - No School
• January 18th - Progress Reports go home
• January 17th - 28th - District Benchmark Assessments

• February 8th - 11th - Hearing/Vision Screening
• February 10th - ELAC meeting
• February 21st - No School - Presidents' Day
• February 24th - School Site Council meeting
• February 25th - End of Trimester 2
• March 8th & 9th - Parent Conferences
• March 13th - Daylight Savings
• March 18th - No School: Professional Development Day
• April 11th - 18th - Spring Break
• May 30th - Memorial Day - No School
• June 2nd - Last day of school