The following is Panama Public School’s plan to utilize ARP ESSER III funds to prepare for the prevention of Covid 19:

• New ventilation systems in classrooms, weight room and elementary physical education center.
• School Nurse to help with contact tracing and work with local families, health department, students, staff and administrators
• Additional custodian to help sanitize 
• Replacing carpet in all classrooms with tile to make cleaning more efficient.
• Purchasing cleaning supplies for cleaning of our facilities.
• Purchasing educational technology

Panama Public Schools plans to utilize ARP ESSER III funds to Prepare, Prevent, and/ or Respond to the Covid 19 impact on our district.  The decline in our enrollment is of great concern in our district. Even though our enrollment is down, we have hired additional staff to ensure smaller class sizes to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.  We plan on paying the additional/new staff’s salary out of project 795.  We plan on paying existing staff salaries out of project 795.  To prepare for the possibility of transitioning to virtual to help spread the mitigation of Covid 19 we are planning on buying a truck and suburban to help deliver meals, chrome books and other educational materials needed to continue to educate and feed our students. 

We also plan on purchasing a bus or buses to help spread our students out on multiple bus routes to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19.

4. How the LEA will ensure that the interventions it implements, including but not limited to those implemented under section 2001 €(1)[20% set-aside], will respond to the academic, social, emotional and mental health needs of students, and particularly those students disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, including students from low-income families, students of color, English learners, children with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, children in foster care and migratory students. Panama Public Schools plans to utilize ARP ESSER III funds to Prepare, Prevent, and/ or Respond to the Covid-19 impact on our district. The committee recommends the following to address learning loss in student subgroups. Panama is a Title I School-wide district therefore all students are provided remediation as appropriate. Teachers will review benchmark data regularly and end of year scores to determine students who are most At-Risk of failure.  So far the district has not noticed a significant drop in test scores in one subgroup; however, the data shows there is need for remediation district wide. Strategies that will be used to address learning loss will be to hire additional teachers and paras to create a more focused learning environment and smaller class sizes.  Teachers will provide small group instruction and one to one explanation of lessons as needed.

We will hire a Language Arts Interventionist for pull out sessions to work with individual students who are struggling with reading. In addition, we currently use the Nessy software program at the elementary school, which is designed to help students at all academic levels to gain mastery in reading, writing and spelling. After school tutoring at the elementary and high school will be available for all students who are behind in core subjects or who may be identified as disproportionately impacted by Covid19. Technology such as software programs, chrome-books with internet capabilities, or hot spots with monthly subscriptions will also be purchased. We will prioritize these devices to go to low-income families, homeless students, and English learners first, and then disperse the remainder accordingly. This will allow students continuous access to lessons. Breakfast and lunch will be provided to all students in case of a school closure due to Covid 19.  If low-income families, homeless students, English Language learners can’t come to school for meals, we plan on purchasing a truck and/or suburban to deliver meals during Covid-19 school closures and when these students are quarantined.  Panama Public Schools will review student academic data often to monitor growth. Interventions may be adjusted to continually meet the need of students who are under performing academically. Lastly, we contract with New Hope Counseling and Guidance Center out of Poteau, OK to address the social and emotional needs of all students.