Grandview Heights Schools continues to review and consider guidance on COVID-19 mitigation strategies from local, state, and national levels. We expect to receive more information regarding policies for schools soon. District staff will provide an update on current local, state, and national recommendations regarding COVID-19 at a special board meeting the week of August 2nd and a decision will be made at our regular Board of Education meeting on August 11th. All updates to Grandview Heights Schools policies regarding COVID-19 for the 2021-2022 school year will be time-stamped and posted here on this web page and sent out via our district school messenger notification system.

• This is a framework, NOT a binding decision tree.  This framework is designed to trigger a deeper dive and discussion of understanding about what we are seeing and why we are seeing it.  
• Key Factors of Consideration: 1) Students and staff safety; 2) Adding to the spread of COVID 19 (linked cases); and 3) School district operations.  Two-weeks of actualized data before a change in learning mode. 
• In addition, we will evaluate the FCPH positivity rate. 
• Our ability to find substitute teachers could present a real challenge regardless of data and cause us to move to distance learning.

The GHS COVID-19 Learning Mode Framework takes a variety of factors into consideration:  

• The Ohio Public Health Advisory System Warning Levels (Yellow, Orange, Red, and Purple) for Franklin County.  
• FCPH data on rates of of infection and positive tests and rates of infection for the whole community and  for specific age groups.
• Student and staff absenteeism for illness.
• The effect of asymptomatic quarantine students/staff on district operations.
• Building specific data on COVID-19 cases, which may indicate an outbreak or school-based transmission among students and staff.
• Expert opinions of county and state level health officials.

The Grandview Heights Schools Leadership Team meets weekly with Elisabeth Root, PhD, faculty in the Division of Epidemiology at the College of Public Health and a team of researchers from The Ohio State University (OSU) regarding its partnership on a pilot project titled CATS Data - COVID-19 Analytics and Targeted Surveillance.  

The OSU core team includes:

This partnership will provide our district with data on what is happening within our district’s specific school boundaries regarding COVID-19 cases, spread rates, attendance, etc.  This information will provide the Board of Education and our district with yet another layer of information that will help the Grandview Heights Schools (GHS) make the best decisions possible as we move forward.

Data specific to GHS will be updated every Friday. This webpage and CATS Data dashboard are in the development phase, but we are getting closer to being able to share this with our community at large.  We are hopeful to have this information and additional dashboard finalized in the coming week.  Currently, based on CATS Data for Grandview Heights Schools district boundaries, the case count is highest among all the other school districts in Franklin County for COVID-19 cases when compared to other school districts and areas of Franklin County.  This is reflective of our entire community, not just our school age students. 

In order to reverse these trends, we need your help!  Please continue to be vigilant in wearing masks, washing hands, and watching your distance between yourself and others.  It's important to remember that behavior outside of our schools can put our staff and students at risk.  When we wear masks and maintain six feet of distance in schools, we keep our students and staff safe.  However, spread of the virus is likely taking place in athletics and social events outside of school.  As a result, we need to recommit to taking the same precautions across our community.   As we’ve stated throughout this process, what is happening in the community will impact our goal to keep students in the classroom.  Working together, we believe we can once again lower the community spread in our area.