In case you missed it, below is a message from Principal Simpson, which was sent out on Sunday, Jan. 2:
Happy New year! I am looking forward to a fun and productive second half of the 21-22 school year.
The fires up in Boulder County last week were completely devastating. Our hearts are with those who suffered such tremendous loss. If you have family or friends impacted by the fires, and know of ways that our community may be able to help, please let me know. My heart is breaking thinking about those kids trying to return to school in the next couple of weeks.
While I have still not heard directly from the Douglas County Health Department, I heard from DCSD that they would be adopting the new isolation/quarantine guidance adopted last week by the CDC and CDPHE. What does that mean for us?
- If your child (or a staff member) has symptoms of COVID for more than 48 hours, they will be required to have a negative PCR test OR stay out of school for at least five days or until their symptoms resolve (no longer than ten days).
- If your child (or a staff member) tests positive for the virus, they can return to school after five days as long as their symptoms have resolved, and they can wear a mask comfortably for an additional five days.
- If your child (or a staff member) is exposed outside of school or during an extra-curricular activity, they will need to quarantine for five days. You should test them between days 3-5. If the student or staff member is vaccinated and shows no symptoms, they are not required to quarantine. They should still test between days 3-5.
- For school exposures, we will continue to communicate with parents. If there are three-four connected cases in a classroom within fourteen days, we will work with the health department to determine if we need to move a classroom to remote learning for a short time. If we have five or more connected cases in a class, we will have to move to that class to remote learning for a short time.
Cases are increasing quickly among our community and impacting multiple families and staff members. There may be times in the next several weeks where we may need to move classrooms or grade levels to remote learning due to staff shortages and operational challenges. While we hope that this won’t happen and will do our best to avoid that scenario, I want to prepare everyone for that possibility. This operational challenge is not a situation that is unique to BFA. There is a shortage of substitutes all over the country. We have a strong sub-pool, but we keep them all busy daily under normal circumstances. If we were to have an outbreak among the staff, we very possibly might not be able to fill all the openings. If you are interested in becoming a substitute teacher or instructional aide, please let me know.
We are already seeing an impact on our support staff that we rely heavily on for recess and lunch coverage. Tomorrow we are stretched extremely thin. If you are available, please come volunteer for lunch and recess supervision.
I will keep you updated regularly on how things are going in the building and will communicate as quickly as possible about any changes that we need to implement based on operational or other challenges.
I am looking forward to seeing all the students tomorrow morning. 2022 is going to be a great year!
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.