At a meeting on Monday, July 20th, the Oconee County School Board voted to approve a district reopening plan. The reopening plan includes both a five day per week face-to-face option and a remote option, SDOC@Home.  The board made one significant change to the original plan. Families are being asked to commit for a semester, not the entire school year as originally planned. Due to this adjustment, families have until 4:30pm Thursday, July 23^rd, to call their child’s school to change their selected option for next school year.  The district requests any family who has not pre-registered their student(s) before now to please call their child’s school(s) to complete a pre-registration request. Any child not pre-registered by Thursday, July 23rd will be placed in the face-to-face option for the upcoming school year.

As part of the reopening plan, the board approved a new start date of August 24th for the 2020-2021 school year. The board revised the start date after Governor McMaster encouraged school districts to consider delaying the start of school in light of the spike in COVID-19 cases in South Carolina.  High schools will finish June 2, 2021.  Elementary and middle schools will finish June 9, 2020 due to the five extra days of instruction approved by the state legislature. To accommodate the two week delay, changes have been made to the calendar, including the shortening of Thanksgiving and Christmas break. This was done to minimize the overlap of semesters for dual enrollment students as well as preserving the 2021 summer break for students and teachers.  Updated calendars will be available on the district website.