Good Afternoon, Reading Public School Staff and Families,

First and foremost, I hope that you and your families have had a safe and healthy holiday season. 

I would like to expand upon the communication that was sent out last Wednesday regarding our school district going remote the week of January 4^th.  I have received a lot of communication, understandably so, and the reaction has ranged from rage to relief.  All these emotions are completely reasonable given what we have all had to endure since March.  Everyone is fatigued, anxious, and angry. Parents are upset and frustrated, and I empathize with those emotions.  We all want our student back in school and we want our students to be able to participate in athletics and extra-curricular activities at the high school.

I wanted to take this opportunity to outline further my rationale for going remote and cancelling in person athletics and extra-curricular for this week.  I hope that you permit me this opportunity to review the facts and data with the understanding that we are doing everything possible to have students and staff back safely at school.

• First and foremost, I did not take this decision lightly to go remote next week.  In fact, it was one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my career.  It was based on data, science, and facts, not politics and hearsay.  Although I work closely with my colleagues in other districts, my decisions are what is best for the Reading Public Schools and not necessarily what every other district is doing. Each district has their own unique needs as evidenced by the different learning models throughout the school districts.  Some districts announced a few weeks ago that out of an abundance of caution, they would be going remote for one or two weeks after vacation.  I decided to wait and look at the data before making that decisions because I wanted our students in school.  After reviewing the data, it was clear that we needed to go remote next week.  In addition, if we are going remote for health reasons, it would be difficult to defend a decision to continue to have athletics when I am saying that we cannot attend school in person.  I share with you this information because my number one priority has always been the health and safety of our students while balancing the educational needs. 
• My decision to go remote was based upon consultation over a two-week period with our Director of Nurses (Who speaks daily with the Town’s Public Health Nurse), the District Leadership Team of Directors, Principals, and Central Office Staff and the Town Incident Command Team, which consists of the Town Manager, Fire Chief, Police Chief, Deputy Fire Chief, Chief Financial Officer and Board of Health representation. 
• As COVID-19 cases have increased across the state, and in our community (our current positivity rate is 6.13% and has doubled in the last month), we have of course seen more cases in the schools. Our health and safety protocols have kept students and staff safe even when there has been an exposure in school. The flexibility and commitment of our staff has allowed us to have individual classrooms or cohorts switch to remote learning as needed for quarantine purposes. In addition, administrators and school nurses have worked tirelessly to inform families of proper guidance when these occasions occur, including after school evening, early morning, or weekends to prevent further spread. All these measures have kept our students and staff safe even amid this ongoing pandemic.
• However, in the few weeks before the Christmas break, we discovered that despite our best efforts, we have seen some in-school transmission of COVID-19.  To date, we have had three in-school transmissions at Reading Memorial High School and RISE Preschool at Wood End.  This, combined with the increases at Reading Memorial High School and RISE, prompted us to go remote at the High School the three days prior to the break and to have two classrooms at RISE be dismissed early last Wednesday.  We are hopeful that these in school transmission cases will remain few, and that most of the students will have mild symptoms, however, these transmissions have not only affected the students, but their families, including in some cases high risk individuals. 
• During the week between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, we have had more than 20 students and staff test positive for the virus (See below). The community cases have continued to rise, as evidenced by our Board of Health.  Based on what happened during the Thanksgiving holiday, it is anticipated that the numbers may increase again over the next week due to the Christmas holiday.
• From December 23^rd to January 3^rd (this morning), we have the following student and staff cases in our schools that we are aware of according to the state data base:

• 13 RMHS Students
• 8 Middle School Students (3 Parker, 5 Coolidge)
• 5 Elementary Students (2 Killam, 2 Eaton, 1 Barrows)
• 4 RISE Students (Wood End and RMHS)
• 7 Staff (1 RMHS, 1 Birch Meadow, 3 RISE, 1 Eaton, 1 Wood End)

• The numbers above represent students who have been tested.  What is not represented here are students who have not been tested but have been in close contact with family members who have tested positive.  We are aware that there are students who fall in that category.
• If this data is expanded an additional week, every school in the district was impacted with student and/or staff cases.  In addition, in our analysis, we were finding that families as a whole were being impacted which had an effect across several schools.  This impacted both our positive cases and quarantine cases even more. 
• Unfortunately, we are seeing an increase in positive cases for students who are participating in sports, not only at the High School level, but at the younger levels as well.  At the younger levels, we have seen transmissions from students who are in gymnastics and hockey.  At the high school level, we have seen positive cases in all the winter sports, including basketball.
• In terms of sports, we were able to have a modified fall sports schedule, again by successfully using protocols and postponing events when indicated by positive cases or exposures. the winter season has already been more challenging. Before hockey even started, there were 4 positive cases, and another 2 cases following the first tryout. On the first day of basketball tryouts there was an exposure to one positive case, and the gymnastics team has had 6 positive cases following exposure on their first day of practice.  Over the last few days, we have seen additional cases with students who participate in boys and girls hockey.  If we were practicing, we would have most likely had to postpone those practices because students would have been in close contact.  We have become aware that not all venues have been following the same consistent protocols, and these off-site facilities have put our athletes and their families at risk.  Again, we hope that our students recover fully, and that these cases have minimal impact on their families. However, there is concern in the medical community that some athletes may have residual health issues such as myocarditis following infection with COVID-19 even if only mildly symptomatic. For this reason, though we hope to resume a winter sports schedule as soon as possible, we must do so taking every precaution. 
• I have heard from several families who have either Preschool, Kindergarten, or High Needs students who will have difficulty accessing remote learning.  This is the group that I am most concerned about from a learning need, but my decisions to have these groups go remote was because we have had staff and student cases and in school transmissions this past week at RISE (see above) and we have High Needs students test positive at other levels as well.  Some of our High Needs students are some of our most vulnerable students and are at a higher risk of infection.  However, I also believe that we are sending a message to those staff and students that their health and safety is not as important as the health and safety of the general population if we have them in school when we are telling everyone else to stay home.  Please know that our Principals and Central Office administrators are working on plans to support learning for these students and to provide additional compensatory services for our special education students, if necessary.
• It should be noted that we are not cancelling school, we are going remote.  We planned for this situation in case it had to happen.  When we developed this model this year, we made sure that we had as much in live learning time as possible, which includes synchronous online learning.  Our remote learning model is strong and the amount of live learning hours that we provide is well above the state requirements.  Daily live personal connections are being made every day with staff and students, which is critical to the social and emotional well-being of our students.  It is not perfect; nothing is during this pandemic.  However, we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish with this model as a school district. 

In conclusion, it is our rationale that by keeping learning remote for 4 days next week, we allow for a full 2-week time frame from any holiday exposures, therefore decreasing the risk of further in school transmission. I sincerely hope after this time we can cautiously resume in person learning and athletics and extra-curricular activities.  We are continuing to monitor all the information, including student and staff cases and will be communicating additional information by midweek next week. 

When we return, we will be reemphasizing all our health and safety protocols with our staff and students.  What we have learned with our in-school transmissions is that those protocols were not followed.  Moving forward, we have been working with the Town Incident Command Team to review different testing models for staff and students.  As we enter the new year, I am hopeful that we will be able to provide a reputable testing program which will continue to improve the health and safety or our in-school learning.  We also look forward to having members of our community vaccinated.  Until that time we will continue to work to protect the health and safety of our students, staff and families.

I will be having a staff forum and a community forum later this week to give you an opportunity to ask questions.  More details and links will be coming out early this week.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at john.doherty@reading.k12.ma.us and I will be more than happy to respond and discuss your questions with you.

Thank you and be safe.

John Doherty

Superintendent

Reading Public Schools

82 Oakland Road

Reading, Massachusetts 01867

781-944-5800

John.doherty@reading.k12.ma.us