The Council Bluffs Community School district will temporarily return remote learning starting November 23. In a statement sent to parents of the district via email, Superintendent Dr. Vicki Murillo cited rising positivity rates for the modified schedule.

The district will shift to the Remote Learning Phase on Monday, November 23 and Tuesday, November 24, prior to the five-day Thanksgiving break. Then the district will shift to the Hybrid learning phase on Monday, November 30 until Winter break begins on December 23. The district chose to wait to make the shift until November 23rd to provide advance notice to parents, and to allow teachers and students time to prepare for the time away from our school buildings.

“To make this decision, we considered the county-wide COVID-19 test positivity rate that has now reached 21.2%,” Murillo said in the email. “We also considered our own student and staff absenteeism due to positive COVID cases and quarantines. Please note that the sets of data cannot be compared since the county’s rate tracks the percent of tests taken that are positive, not the total population of the county. Our data is based on total student enrollment and total number of employees.”

Murillo continued, “Our goal is to help mitigate the spread of the virus in our community, especially if we continue to encourage staff and district families to follow health and safety practices at home and in the community. We also believe this temporary shift will help lower staff and student/parent stress levels that have naturally been affected with the virus prevalent in our community. Additionally, this will also allow our custodial staff to thoroughly sanitize all areas of our school buildings.

“I will continue to keep student and staff well-being as the priority as we monitor the county data and our district’s absenteeism/COVID-19 data in the weeks to come to make future decisions about which phase of our Return to Learn plan is most appropriate moving forward.”