Good Evening, Reading Public School Staff and Community,

Here is a midweek Fall Reopening Update:

• Birch Meadow-As we communicated this weekend, 13 Birch Meadow staff have been quarantined for two weeks as a result of a staff member testing positive.  Fortunately, up to this point, all of the COVID tests of the staff and students that came in close contact have come back negative. 

We did have school at Birch Meadow today.  Because of our week on/week off model, the general classroom students (except kindergarten) were not in last week.  Because the office staff and Principal have been quarantined, Assistant Superintendent Chris Kelley is filling in as Principal, we have an extended day staff member filling in as secretary, we are getting nurse coverage, and we have temporarily transferred two paraeducators from other elementary schools during the quarantine period.

• RMHS-Because of the positive cases that we communicated this weekend, we have quarantined over 80 students at RMHS who were in close contact.  The vast majority of these students were in Grades 9 and 10 and had not been in school yet because of our phase in hybrid model.  We will continue to monitor the situation through contact tracing.

• Grade 4 and 5 Phase In-Because Birch Meadow staff are still quarantined next week and we had to transfer staff from other elementary schools and locations to cover Birch Meadow so that they could remain open, we will not be able to bring in Grades 4 and 5 until the week of November 16^th at the earliest.  We are still in the process of hiring a few more staff members at Wood End and Killam as described in an earlier communication today.  We realize that this is not ideal for those students who have not been in school yet, but we simply do not have the staffing to bring those students back.  We are continuing to interview to fill the vacancies and we hope to be able to bring those students back on November 16^th. 

• School Committee Meeting Tomorrow Night-There will be a School Committee meeting tomorrow evening at 7:00 p.m. on Microsoft Teams.  The link to the meeting is below.  If you want to submit a public comment, please use the live chat on Microsoft Teams.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_OTQyZjQzN2UtNTljNC00ZjQwLThiY2EtNDkwZjJkZmY4YjAw%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%226b81bca4-cd59-4341-a904-ea2ff758fe2a%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22c0e8c5d3-a82a-4511-9dc1-a9f6080ccbc3%22%2c%22IsBroadcastMeeting%22%3atrue%7d

Thank you and have a good night!

John F. Doherty

Superintendent

Reading Public Schools

82 Oakland Road

Reading, MA 01867

781-944-5800