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Monday’s return of pre-K students delayed                                                                

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education has decided to move discussions about the potential delay of the district’s phased reopening plan to its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 27. The special called meeting for Thursday, Oct. 22, has been canceled.

Based on the CDC indicators shared at the COVID-19 Special Committee meeting on Tuesday, the district is delaying the start of pre-K and EC pre-K students. The district’s 442 pre-K and 277 EC pre-K students were scheduled to return to in-person learning on Monday, Oct. 26. The start date for those students will now be delayed at least two weeks, pending board action on further district delays or changes. The motion does not call for changing the dates WS/FCS staff members report back to school.

On Tuesday, Oct. 27, the board will meet inside the auditorium of the Education Building at 4801 Bethania Station Road in Winston-Salem at 6:30 p.m. for its regularly scheduled meeting. Among other items, the board is now expected to discuss a motion set forth by the COVID-19 Special Committee to delay all phased re-entry plans at least two weeks for all K-12 students.

Once posted, the agenda can be found under the Meetings tab at the top of the Board of Education webpage or via this link.

On Oct. 27, the auditorium will be open to a limited audience per Gov. Cooper’s executive order. All individuals wishing to attend will be required to submit to a symptom and temperature screening upon arrival and must wear face coverings and observe social distancing for the duration of the meeting.  As always, the meeting will be available for viewing on WS/FCS Cable2 (Spectrum viewers) or a link to the live broadcast can be found on the WS/FCS Cable2 webpage.

The public is also invited to speak in the normal public comment sections during the meeting. Those wishing to speak virtually on an agenda item can use this link, https://bit.ly/agendaspeaking, to sign up and speak virtually. Virtual speakers must sign up via the electronic form by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, in order to receive instructions on how to call into the meeting and speak at the given time.

Those wishing to speak virtually on non-agenda items, during the “Meeting Open to the Public” portion of the meeting should use this link, https://bit.ly/generalspeaking, to sign up to speak virtually. Virtual speakers must sign up to speak by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 27, in order to receive instructions on how to call into the meeting and speak at the given time.

As always, those wishing to speak to the board in person will be asked to sign up in person. Signup sheets will be available when the building opens at 5:30 p.m. until the meeting begins at which point the signup period will close.

Please note, pursuant to Board Policy 9000, those speaking in person will be allowed to address the board first. Virtual speakers will be called on to speak after in-person speakers, in the order in which they signed up. Also pursuant to the policy, the public comment period is limited to 30 minutes. If a large number of people sign up to speak, the board chair may increase the public comment period or reduce the speaking time for individual speakers. Speaking time will be no longer than 3 minutes, however, the board chair does have the ability to reduce the amount of time allotted per speaker.

Those wishing to address the board of education can email members via their email addresses advertised on the board of education webpage.