HILL CITY ELEMENTARY TO CLOSE

Large Number of Staff impacted by COVID-19 Quarantine/Isolation

Hill City Elementary students will transition to distance learning on the
itsLearning platform for the remainder of this week due to the large number of
instructional staff who have been placed in quarantine or isolation due to COVID-19.
The school has been on yellow/alert status since late last week. While we anticipated
numbers to drop, that has not been the case. Instead, they have increased significantly.
Students and staff will have Winter Break the week of February 15th – 19th and no
assignments will be provided during that time. In-person classes should resume at Hill
City Elementary on Monday, February 22, 2021.

We will be providing daily curbside meal service at the school between 11:30 and
12:30. If you are unable to get to the school to pick up meals and need them, please
email beththomp[email protected] by 9 a.m. daily. We will arrange to
have food delivered to you.

MENU for the remainder of the week:
Tuesday- Walking Taco Bowl
Wednesday – Hot Dog with Tater Tots
Thursday – Breaded Chicken Sandwich with Mashed Potatoes
Friday – Breaded Chicken Nuggets
All lunches include fruit, vegetables and milk.

We fully understand the impact school closures have on all of our families, and
we wanted to notify you all as soon as possible today so that you could secure
supervision for your children. In a previous press release on January 20, we shared the
following information pertaining to older siblings supervising younger siblings:
One older sibling will be allowed to transition to distance learning on the itsLearning
platform in order to help with supervising the younger child at home so the parent(s) can
continue to work. When choosing a sibling to be at home to supervise, we encourage
parents to choose a sibling that meets the Child Supervision criteria provided by the

Board of Education
Sue Finley, Chair
Tommy Gartrell, Vice Chair
Tucker Green
Aaron Holland
Steve Smith
Tony Young  – Interim Superintendent

Georgia Department of Family and Children Services. Those guidelines state, “Children (13)
thirteen years and older, who are at an adequate level of maturity, may be left alone and may
perform the role of babysitter, as authorized by the parent, for up to twelve hours.”
If you work outside the home during the school day and need an older sibling to
supervise your HCES student, you must notify the school attendance clerk at the email
noted below for the older student. In the email, you will need to provide the following:
– the name of the older student providing supervision
– the grade level of the older student
– the name of the HCES student they will supervise, and
– the grade level of the HCES student

Attendance email contacts for older siblings:
For grades 9-12, email: [email protected]
For grades 7-8, email: [email protected]
The older student’s attendance will not be penalized during this time; however,
learning expectations and assignment due dates will continue to be in place and grades
for assignments will count.
If you have any questions, please reach out to your child’s teacher.

Media Contact:
Destini Shope
Director of Community Engagement and Public Relations
[email protected]