Androscoggin County remains yellow; All other counties green.

AUGUSTA — The Mills Administration today released an update to its color-coded Health Advisory System that classifies counties’ relative risk of COVID-19 transmission to assist schools as they continue with their efforts to deliver instruction and support students safely.

Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC) assessed COVID-19 data and trends for all counties and released the following designations:

• YELLOW: Androscoggin County continues to have an elevated new case rate of 77 cases per 10,000 residents,  more than double the statewide average.
• NOW GREEN: The new case rates in Kennebec, Oxford, and Somerset counties have fallen by at least 20 percent, and their positivity rates are below 5 percent.
• All other counties remain green, including Franklin and York, which were closely monitored in the last update but have since shown improvements.

These designations are made out of an abundance of caution and for the consideration of school administrative units in their decisions to deliver instruction. DHHS and Maine CDC continue to review evidence that indicates lower transmission of COVID-19 in schools compared to the general population.

Over the last 30 days, the rate of new cases for school staff and students has remained steady at 46 per 10,000, about 40 percent lower than a new case rate of 78 per 10,000 for the general population.

This continues to demonstrate that in-person learning in schools that follow public health precautions can be conducted safely, without increased transmission of COVID-19, when schools use proven health and safety protocols and resources.

The Health Advisory System categorizations are defined as follows:

• RED: Categorization as “red” suggests that the county has a high risk of COVID-19 spread and that in-person instruction is not advisable.
• YELLOW: Categorization as “yellow” suggests that that the county has an elevated risk of COVID-19 spread and that schools may consider additional precautions and/or hybrid instructional models to reduce the number of people in schools and classrooms at any one time.
• GREEN: Categorization as “green” suggests that the county has a relatively low risk of COVID-19 spread and that schools may consider in-person instruction, as long as they are able to implement the required health and safety measures.  Schools in a “green” county may need to use hybrid instruction models if there is insufficient capacity or other factors (facilities, staffing, geography/transportation, etc.) that may prevent full implementation of the health and safety requirements.

The county-level assessments are based on both quantitative and qualitative data, including but not limited to recent case rates, positivity rates, and syndromic data (e.g., symptoms of influenza or COVID-19). Those data are publicly posted every week on the Maine CDC website. DHHS and Maine CDC also consider qualitative factors, such as the presence of outbreaks that may potentially affect school-age children.

The Health Advisory System reflects ongoing analysis of evolving data, and serves as one piece of information that school and district leaders can use to make decisions about how to deliver education during the school year. The qualitative and quantitative considerations and data used by the CDC in determining community transmission risk levels for schools can be located here: How County Risk Levels for Maine Schools are Determined

The Health Advisory System can be found on the Maine DOE website in Part I of the Framework for Reopening Schools and Returning to In-Person Classroom Instruction: https://www.maine.gov/doe/framework/part-I.

Maine schools have been safely open since the fall by adhering to the six requirements for returning to in-person instruction and by following the protocols for identifying close contacts that are found in the Standard Operating Procedure for a positive case in schools, regardless of their county color designation.

The next update will be provided on May 21, 2021. Updating this advisory on a two-week basis aligns with the incubation period for COVID-19 and allows for greater stability in the trend data for small counties.

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The Maine Department of Education’s Certification team is excited to report that they have held a 2-3 week processing time for more than a year, despite the heavy volume of inquiries and responses they attend to on a daily basis to manage the initial applications and renewal of educator and administrator credentials across Maine.

The transition from a hard copy paper filing and processing system to the Maine Educator Information System (MEIS) in 2018 has allowed the team to work more efficiently at assisting educators to manage their credentials completely online.

Since the start of 2021, Maine DOE’s Certification Team has received 11,000 applications for certification and issued roughly 9,000 credentials. In that same time frame they have sent 1,500 – 2,000 emails a week, assisted educators on more than 100 phone calls a day, and their support staff have been preparing roughly 1,500 documents a week for evaluators to process.

Beyond their the work of processing educator credentials, the team has also continued their 8:00am support staff training twice a week, and created a website committee that has and continues to streamline the information and ease of use on the Maine DOE’s Certification website.

Parents providing home instruction are required to submit a Notice of Intent to Provide Home Instruction within 10 days of starting a home instruction program and then again each year by September 1 for subsequent year students. This Notice must contain, among other things, a “statement of assurance that indicates that the home instruction program will include an annual assessment of the student’s academic progress that includes at least one of the forms of assessment described [in statute].” The continuing/subsequent year home instruction Notice submission deadline (September 1) occurs after the conclusion of the previous school year, which is defined as the period July 1 – June 30. Please note that parents of ongoing home instruction students may choose to deliver instruction on a schedule which does not coincide with the reporting period; however the school year definition is always used for the purposes of counting the required 175 days. Since the annual assessment is designed to assess academic progress, it should be administered toward the end of the school year for which progress is being assessed.

An annual assessment can be a teacher letter written by a Maine certified teacher who performs a home instruction student portfolio review, and looks at items in the portfolio such as the attendance record, lesson plans and sample work, to ascertain whether adequate progress has been made by the student. A different, but equally acceptable, assessment method could be to administer a standardized achievement test such as the California Achievement Test, or the Stanford or Iowa Achievement Test, and submit a copy of the test summary page. Or, the student could, with prior permission and according to established local unit policy and protocol, participate in school administrative unit testing. Please see the full range of assessment options as outlined in the attendance statute, Title 20-A: 5001-A. 

Assessment Submission for Students Discontinuing Home Instruction

“If the home instruction program is discontinued, students of compulsory school age must be enrolled in a public school or an equivalent instruction alternative as provided for in this paragraph. The receiving school shall determine the placement of the student. At the secondary level, the principal of the receiving school shall determine the value of the prior educational experience toward meeting the standards of the system of learning results as established in section 6209.”

For parents who discontinue the home instruction program and re-enroll a student in a public or equivalent instruction school before completing the school year, an assessment may not have been completed yet. The receiving school, according to their policy, may choose to review student assessments or portfolio materials that might aid them in determining placement and/or credit value for students transferring in from home instruction programs. Parents of students who will not be returning to home instruction (graduated or enrolling in school) may submit final assessments to the receiving school, or use the Request to Update Home Instruction Record to provide details and a final assessment to be included in their file.

Assessment Submission for Student Continuing Home Instruction

For continuing/subsequent year students in home instruction, the completed home instruction assessment must be submitted together with the Notice of Intent/Subsequent Year Letter (they may not be submitted separately, or by anyone other than the parent submitting the Notice) via the Home Instruction Portal, or by submitting with the paper Notice of Intent to Provide Home Instruction to the Superintendent of their resident school administrative unit. Either method will serve as the single notification needed to both the resident Superintendent and the Maine Department of Education, as required by law, and will prompt an acknowledgment to parents who supply a valid email address.

More information, Notice of Intent to Provide Home Instruction forms and other resources regarding home instruction are available on the Maine Department of Education Home Instruction webpage.

Please note that the State does not issue transcripts or diplomas for home instruction students.

For questions, please contact DOE’s School Enrollment Specialist at pamela.ford-taylor@maine.gov.