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Winter Hybrid Update 11

Good Afternoon, Reading Public School Community,

I hope you are doing well on this sunny day.  Here is Winter Hybrid Update #11.  Have a great rest of the day and week ahead!                                                                                                                                                                                

  1. Board of Education Decision on Reopening Schools Full In Person-On Friday, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 8-3 to approve giving the Commissioner the authority to decide when remote and hybrid learning would no longer count as part of the Time on Learning Requirements.  Elementary schools will be back full in person on April 5th.  No dates were given for Middle and High School.  We will be receiving more guidance from the State early this week. 

All of us want our students back full time.  However, we need to do this as safely and thoughtfully as possible.  In the fall, we came up with an in person plan for returning back to school full in person.  We will now need to implement that plan and we are currently working with Principals to develop a process to successfully transition back to full in person on all levels.  As you can imagine there are several challenges that we need to address as we go back full in person.  These challenges include the following:

  • Vaccine availability for staff so that they can receive their full doses as soon as possible.
  • Changing classroom seating distance from 6 feet to as low as 3 feet.
  • Quarantining procedures with the change in distance to 3 feet.
  • Moving of furniture back into classrooms.
  • Maintaining lunch distancing with more students (it will still need to be six feet because students will be without masks)
    • It is possible we may need to go to 4 lunches each day in some schools.
  • Scheduling
    • We will keep the Elementary Early dismissal on Friday and may need to go with an 11:30 a.m. dismissal for students on Fridays.
    • Specialist’s schedules at Elementary may look different.
  • How to address the needs of fully remote students
  • Maintaining current special education services in a full in person model
  • Staffing (bringing back furloughed employees and looking at potential leaves of absences)
  • Changing cleaning and disinfecting schedule
  • Changing arrival and dismissal times and procedures
  • Social Emotional Transition for Students back to in person school.

As soon as our plan is in place we will be holding staff and community forums very similar to what we have done in other situations this year. 

2. Preventive Measures-This next month or two will be the most critical of the pandemic in maintaining the preventive measures that we have put in place.  The light is bright at the end of the tunnel, however, we are still in the tunnel.  Please make sure that students and staff continue to follow all of the mitigation efforts that we have put in place including wearing masks (double is recommended), physical distancing, hand hygiene, cohorting, and cleaning/disinfecting.  In addition, we encourage all staff and students to participate in the pooled testing program.  The link to give consent for staff and students to access testing is located at https://bit.ly/3oXiiSa.

3. Pooled Testing Schedule for This Week- We are planning to test all students and staff, PreK-12, who have consented to be tested this week.

The tentative schedule (this may change) is as follows:

  • Coolidge Monday 8:30 a.m.
  • RISE HS: Monday 10:30 a.m.
  • RMHS: Monday and Tuesday during lunch periods and after school 3-4 pm (athletics and extracurricular)
  • Birch Meadow: Monday 12:45 pm
  • Killam: Tuesday 8:30 a.m.
  • Barrows: Tuesday 10:30 a.m.
  • Parker: Wed 8:30 a.m.
  • Eaton: Wed 10:30 a.m.
  • Wood End: Wed 12:30 p.m.
  • We have a team of clinicians from Medix staffing  (RN, LPN and 2 medical assistants) who will be working with us to provide testing. They have had the opportunity to work with our school nurses and orient to each school. Any reflex (follow up)  testing that is required will be done by school nurses.
  • We have been receiving results with 24 hours of arrival to the lab.
  • Once your child is tested, you will only be contacted if they are part of a positive pool. Parents will get an email to register with Project Beacon, so they can get immediate notification of rapid test results.
  • We are hoping that follow up testing can be done at the end of the school day or before school for positive pools.  In the event of all negative rapid tests in a positive pool, a PCR follow up will be sent (collected at same time as rapid).
  • Please see this  Information from CIC (including parent slides and info on parent webinar)

4. Positive Cases This Week-The positive cases for this past week are as follows:

2 RMHS students both remote, no in school close contacts

1 RMHS student who was remote, but came to an in school activity.  We are engaging in contact tracing right now.

1 Parker student remote, no in school close contacts

2 Parker students in person, 25 students quarantined, no staff quarantined

1 Birch Meadow student remote, no in school close contacts

1 Killam student in person, 22 students and 6 staff quarantined

1 Killam staff member who was remote this past week.  Will be quarantined this week.

1 Wood End staff member, retested with a positive pcr test due to an inconclusive pooled test, 3 students and 2 staff quarantined.

5. Pooled Test Results-The pooled testing information for this week is as follows:

Total pooled testing results this week: 93 negative pools, 1 positive (athletics) all retested negative, 1 inconclusive (staff), retested 1 positive individual, contact tracing complete. 

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