These two El Dorado County school districts are returning to a full schedule this month

Two El Dorado County school districts will be returning to a full, in-person schedule just days after the county entered the red tier of the state’s COVID-19 risk assessment system.

That means that by mid-March all 15 school districts will be open in El Dorado County. The only school that remains closed is South Tahoe High School, according to El Dorado County Office of Education communications director Dina Gentry.

Rescue Union School District and Buckeye Union Elementary School District, both which serve students K-8, invited students to return to campus. Here are the details of the planned reopenings:

Rescue Union

More than 2,700 Rescue Union students will transition to a full-time schedule on March 4.

The schedule will be a regular school schedule, five days a week. About 700 students are attending school through distance learning.

“We greatly appreciate our teachers, staff, and administrators for all their time and efforts to completely reconfigure the classrooms so that we can maintain the 4 feet distance between chairs,” read a statement from Superintendent Cheryl Olson. “This was no easy feat and it required us to remove furniture, book racks, and other materials to make room for the desk distancing, but they persevered and made it happen!”

Buckeye Union

Buckeye Union will move from its current hybrid model to a full cohort model on March 15, inviting all students back on campuses at once.

According to Superintendent David Roth, about 4,000 students will be on its 11 campuses and 440 will continue distance learning. Students who choose to remain in distance learning have to transfer into the distance learning school.

About 75% of the districts’ employees who wanted a vaccine have received a one or have appointment scheduled this week. The remaining 25% will receive their first vaccine in early March, according to an email from the district to its parents.

The district tried to implement its full cohort plan in early February but delayed it, according to documents from its school board presentation.

“Case rates of COVID-19 in our community have dramatically declined since the holiday period and there has not been a case of COVID-19 identified on sites in the past 14 days,” read the statement. “With the maintenance of multiple layers of protective measures, a high percentage of employees that have been or are about to be vaccinated, a rapidly decreasing presence of COVID-19 in the community and on our sites, as well as our knowledge that some Districts have successfully transitioned to a full cohort model, Buckeye Union is well positioned to safely expand educational access to students.”