Ray-Pec community,
I trust this email finds you looking forward to our first three-day break of the school year!
We have had two weeks of in-person and in-VIPR instruction, and I want to give a big thank-you to all of our teachers, support team members and administrators at our school campuses and administrative/ancillary facilities. The amount of work and effort that has transpired to provide the first two weeks of instruction and support services has been nothing short of incredible. Please join me in thanking our team for meeting this challenge with the utmost professionalism, patience, and grace!
I have taken a few questions from parents this week about our COVID-19 cases. I want to use most of this message to provide some background and context to our experiences thus far.
Our First 10 Days
Through the first 10 days of school thus far, there have been a total of 68 positive COVID-19 cases reported to us of persons who are either students or staff of the Ray-Pec School District. During the same time period, a total of 108 students and staff have been placed in quarantine for being close contacts of people who have tested positive for COVID-19. Of that number, only 20 students and no staff members have been placed in quarantine for being close contacts of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 while at school. The majority of these student quarantine situations are because of proximity at lunch or in our special needs classrooms. As you know, the district started the school year by requiring face coverings in all indoor situations when appropriate physical distancing cannot be maintained. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) modified their quarantine procedures for this school year to state that when a positive case and a close contact to that positive case are both wearing face coverings, the close contact is not subject to quarantine. These procedures are fully supported by the Cass County Health Department (CCHD). This approach to quarantine procedures is a change from last year. Because of the face covering requirement recently adopted by our Board of Education, contact tracing indicates that up to 334 students have not been subject to quarantine so far this year who otherwise would have been under former quarantine procedures.
Our COVID-19 transparency
As you know, we have made the commitment to share with our parent and staff communities information of each positive COVID-19 case among students and staff within 24 hours of the District’s director of human resources being notified by the Cass County Health Department (CCHD). If you would like to be on the notification list for this information, please register here if you have not done so already. Additionally, we have recently added more COVID-19 information to our website dashboard. The dashboard will be updated regularly with the number of active cases of isolations, and quarantines that have originations inside and outside of our schools for the most recent seven-day period.
In closing, thank you for your patience and grace thus far in the school year. Every day is a new adventure for all of us. While we can’t promise what our tomorrows will look like, we can promise you that we will make the very best of each day that we have with your children.
Thank you for entrusting your children to the Ray-Pec School District,
Mike Slagle
