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COVID-19 Update

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 3/9/20 @ 12:56 PM PDT
UPDATED: 2/1/22 @ 10:50 AM PDT

CHOICES Education Group is deeply committed to the health and safety of all students, school staff and volunteer presenters involved in CHOICES presentations. To that end, we have prepared the following guidance for CHOICES Program Managers regarding CHOICES delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the delta and omicron variants. This page will be updated as necessary and as relevant to CHOICES.

  1. Stay in regular contact with the schools you are planning to serve. Schools may conduct classes in-person, online or using a hybrid model of both in-person and online instruction. Get the latest updates on their status and their COVID-19 protocols so you can plan how best to serve them.
  2. For schools that conduct classes 100% in-person and allow visitors, you can plan to serve them in-person, complying with this guidance (see items 4-6 below in particular). For schools that conduct classes 100% virtually, you can serve them online via real-time interactions with teachers and students in their virtual classrooms. For schools that conduct their classes in person but do not allow outside visitors, you can serve them online if they have the technology that will allow your volunteers and the students to see and hear each other clearly. Please contact us for more details regarding online delivery modes.
  3. If your organization was licensed to deliver CHOICES during this past school year, but were unable to do so due to the impacts of Covid-19, we will upon your request extend your existing license agreement to December 31 of the current year so you can still serve those students in the fall (at their new grade level), while also serving your current-grade-level students sometime that same school year, all so that no students miss out on CHOICES during this challenging time. Please let us know your situation and we will make it happen.
  4. If you will proceed with live in-person delivery in your schools this coming school year, we strongly recommend that your CHOICES volunteer presenters be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including a booster shot, or have received a negative COVID-19 test within the 48 hours prior to arriving at the school. Additionally, we strongly recommend that you follow the guidance of the CDC and your local health authorities with regard to masking, social distancing and hand sanitizing. Please remind all of your volunteer presenters to follow safe and healthy practices as instructed in the section below, to always maintain safe and healthy contact with students, school staff and co-presenters, and to follow all school requirements for visiting the classroom.
  5. On the days leading up a scheduled in-person CHOICES presentation, and on the days themselves, if any of your presenters feel ill or have any symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or any COVID-19 variant, or have had direct contact with anyone who has had a positive test for COVID-19, they should immediately inform you, refrain from presenting in-person at that school, and contact their doctor. See our Emergency Call List information below on preparing for last-minute replacement volunteers.
  6. Instruct volunteer CHOICES presenters that whenever they are on school campuses, they should wash their hands or use at least 60% alcohol hand sanitizer before having contact with students and their CHOICES classroom materials, as well as before and after every class they serve.

Information About Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in K-12 Schools

Information about preventing the spread of COVID-19 in schools is changing often. Please visit the following link to read the latest information for K-12 schools: Guidance for COVID-19 Prevention in K-12 Schools | CDC

If you believe you were exposed to a confirmed case of COVID-19, contact your doctor immediately and follow their advice. If you unable to contact your doctor, contact the closest health care facility and follow their advice regardless of affiliation or insurance coverage, or call 911.

Emergency Call List Information

Occasionally a volunteer CHOICES presenter may need to cancel their assigned presentation at a school the day before or morning of their presentation due to illness, car trouble or other emergencies. As the CHOICES Program Manager (CPM), you can prepare for replacing such a volunteer on short notice by creating an Emergency Call List.

The Emergency Call List contains the full contact information of experienced volunteer CHOICES presenters that have agreed in advance to be on-call to fill in for presenters who have to cancel at the last minute. They keep their physical programs with them and ready to use all times, in their car, home or office. The list will include at a minimum their name, cell number and email address, but possibly also their work and home numbers and addresses.

When a scheduled presenter informs you that they need to cancel, you can simply call down the list until you secure a replacement. As the CPM you should also be prepared in the same way to replace the scheduled presenter as a last resort. Finally, if all else fails, contact the school before the class session starts to reschedule that class and/or the whole school as necessary.

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