Rochester Public Schools’ Safe & Open Schools Plan

(ABC 6 News) – Rochester Public Schools has now released its final Safe & Open Schools Plan with the hope to keep schools in the district both safe and open during the school year ahead.

The recommendations in this plan are based on guidance from the CDC, the Minnesota Department of Health, and the Minnesota Department of Education. Plans include multiple mitigation strategies from face coverings to field trips to visitors and volunteers within the schools.

We all want to keep our schools here in Rochester both safe and open. And in fact, we’re releasing a plan today to do just that and in developing that plan we paid attention to not only national and local, medical and public health experts, but we also listened to you. In fact, we got thousands of comments on that plan and we’ve carefully integrated them into the final recommendations that we’re releasing today," Interim Superintendent Kent Pekel said.

Schools and programs within RPS will update their COVID-19 preparedness plans to align with overall strategy.

"Whatever your perspective is on the plan and the specific components of it, whether it’s masks or social distancing, I want you to know that we listened to you, to students to parents to community members and that we are trying to balance the competing priorities that we have to move forward in this new school year," Pekel said.

This is a work in progress so RPS will continue to update this Safe & Open Schools Plan as the science changes and additional input from the community is received.