Dear Rondout Families, Faculty and Friends,
Happy New Year!
It was great to have a chance to speak to almost all our families this past week. It’s always a pleasure to connect personally and I was happy to learn that many families had a wonderful and COVID free break. Unfortunately the COVID surge is a reality and many families experienced the challenges of COVID first hand or as a close contacts. We are committed to continuing in-person learning moving forward and hope you will understand that we may need to make some adjustments in our day to day work due to the COVID impact on staffing and services.
The current guidelines for response to COVID in K-12 schools is expected to officially change to match CDC guidelines, we are waiting for final confirmation of what the IDPH/ISBE guidelines will be. I realize that other schools have chosen to adopt the most recent CDC guidelines for schools that were published on January 6th. We will be waiting for the official word from IDPH and ISBE to be sure of the content from the agencies that oversee our COVID protocols. We will keep you posted and are following these developments closely. Please feel free to reach out should you have questions.
With the current surge, we will be postponing the after school basketball activities for at least the next two weeks. We will continue to monitor our school-wide rates once students have returned to class.
If you have not signed up for COVID testing, I encourage you to consider it. You can sign up for weekly or as needed. This will provide you with testing access for your children should they become symptomatic and or are close contacts. We have access to both the Shield ( saliva) testing as well as the Binex Now ( nasal swab). Testing supplies and access has been limited due to high demand so this is a great service we can offer to parents for their children.
On another note, we would appreciate you sending in a copy of your child’s vaccination card once they are fully vaccinated. Some of the new guidelines are dependent on students’ vaccination status and we can expedite our responses by having that information on file. While at this point in time it is not required, having it available would be extraordinarily helpful.
Thank you for your ongoing cooperation. We will get through this next challenging phase of COVID19 together.
Stay safe..Take care…
Until next time…
Dr. Jenny Wojcik
