Guiding Principles

This mitigation strategy was used during the 2020.21 school at both the elementary and secondary levels.  BSD's elementary educational model has clustered students into small, primarily self-contained classrooms or cohorts.  At the secondary level, cohorting was accomplished by having two different cohorts of students coming to school on alternate days (Cohort 1 on Mondays and Tuesdays, Cohort 2 on Thursdays and Fridays).

By default, cohorting at the elementary level will occur for the 2021.22 school simply due to the continued use of our traditional elementary model that clusters the same groups of students together for the majority of the day.  Cohorting is not in play at the secondary level due to the wide variation in students specialized schedules and the specialized certification of teachers in specific academic content areas.

In an effort to minimize mixing and contact between students:

• The scheduling of student groups (cohorts) will be done to keep groups as independent and stable as possible, with little to no mixing of classes, throughout the school day.
• Minimizing or eliminating the mixing of student groups applies equally to any specialized group permitted to come on-site due to specific need.
• Staff and students are not permitted to organize and schedule student or staff cohorts to be on campus without the authorization of the building principal.  It is the responsibility of the building principal to ensure that all student and staff groups have received his or her approval, protocols are in place to avoid mixing of groups, and that those supervising groups coordinate schedules and activities to avoid mixing of groups.
• School visitation and access will be restricted.  Access to any portion of the building for any reason will be at the discretion of the building principal or designee.  In all cases, any permitted access will be confined to pre-identified common meeting areas to minimize exposure.

What is Cohorting?
Cohorting (sometimes called podding) is a new term for a strategy that schools may use to limit contact between students and staff as part of their efforts to limit transmission of coronavirus (the virus that causes COVID-19). These strategies work by keeping groups of students – and sometimes staff – together over the course of a pre-determined period of time. Ideally, the students and staff within a cohort will only have physical proximity with others in the same cohort. This practice may help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by limiting cross-over of students and teachers to the extent possible, thus:
     •  Decreasing opportunities for exposure or transmission of coronavirus
     •  Reducing contact with shared surfaces
     •  Facilitating more efficient contact tracing in the event of a positive case
     •  Allowing for targeted testing, quarantine, and/or isolation of a single cohort instead of school-wide measures in the event of a positive case or cluster of cases


Additional Resources: 
   CDC:  What is cohorting?