Principal's Update 09-20-2021

Dear JES School Community,

Here is an update regarding Covid

New Data

• Last week we had three new cases to bring our year long total to eight
• Since the LNSU Dashboard was updated on Friday, we have learned of four more cases, bringing our total to 12
• The good news is that the overwhelming majority of students who have been considered close contacts at JES have tested negative
  • Thus far, we have received negative test results on more than 60 students with just a handful of positives within our school community.
  • It does not appear that Covid is spreading much, if at all, at JES

Mitigation Strategies

As of the beginning of last week, we have restricted student grouping and movement so that students are only able to interact with their homeroom class all school day, including snack, lunch, and recess.  In the JES Connections program students will eat snack with their activity group to reduce the contact with other students. On buses, all students have an assigned seat to reduce contact to just the students sitting within 6 feet. The most important Covid mitigation strategy you as parents and caregivers can do is to keep your child home from school if they have any signs of illness, including:

• Cough
• Diarrhea
• Fatigue
• Fever of 100.0 or above
• Headache
• Loss of Taste or Smell
• Muscle Aches
• Nausea
• Runny Nose
• Sore Throat
• Vomiting
• Shortness of Breath

Student Learning While at Home

If a student is quarantined as a result of being symptomatic, testing positive for Covid, or being a close contact of someone with Covid, JES will provide educational opportunities.  These experiences and activities will vary based on several factors, including:

• Age of students

• Subject matter being taught

• Content of lesson

• Ration of students who are learning at JES as opposed to those learning at home

You should expect that students will engage in both synchronous learning, like a class Google Meet, or asynchronous learning, like teachers providing academic tasks that correlate to classroom objectives.  This document provides guidelines regarding the amount of time that should be spent learning each day.  Both synchronous and asynchronous learning can be counted toward the daily goals for minimum work time. 

JES teachers will communicate to their students and families what remote learning will look like in their grade level.  For example, teachers may choose to communicate that if less than half of their class is working remotely, students should be working on an independent packet of tasks (provided by the teacher), but if at any point more than half of the class ends up working remotely, parents will be contacted with information regarding synchronous learning.

Sincerely,

 

David Manning, Principal

dmanning@jesvt.org