Ray-Pec Community,
Thank you for your continued support as we work through this latest wave of the pandemic. I have two items on which I want to update you.
COVID-19 Rapid Testing
For the past several weeks, we have been able to provide COVID-19 rapid testing services to our students who are exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 or who have been exposed to COVID-19. We were able to do this with testing kits provided by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Late last week, we were notified by DESE that they were suspending all shipments of testing kits due to a nationwide shortage of such kits and the difficulty of securing inventory. As a result, we will no longer be able to provide rapid tests for students. We hope that the needed inventory will be supplied to DESE soon and that we will be able to start this program again.
Contact Tracing
Our contact tracing process will also undergo a change. Because of the sheer volume of positive cases, conducting a specific contact tracing regimen on every positive case in our schools is no longer feasible. However, we continue to believe that parents want to know if there is a case in a classroom whereby their children could have been exposed to the virus. To meet this need, we will transition to a notification about a positive case that will be classroom-based. If a positive case is reported to us about a student in a classroom/extracurricular activity, the parents of students in that entire classroom/activity will be informed via email about the potential of exposure. Parents will be urged to monitor their children for symptoms and other suggested actions by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Given the current prevalence of this latest wave in the community, this approach is a more complete way to alert parents about potential exposure in the classroom.
Your Assistance Is Still Greatly Needed
It is important that we remain vigilant for symptoms of COVID-19. If your child has a fever, fatigue, muscle aches, sore throat, loss of taste or smell, or any other symptom listed here, please keep her/him at home. This is critical to help reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread in our classrooms.
Face coverings continue to be highly recommended by everyone when physical distancing cannot be achieved.
Additionally, I encourage you to talk to your healthcare provider about vaccinations to see if they are right for your child.
Our number one priority is to keep students and staff healthy and for schools to remain open. Our critical component in being able to accomplish that will be the availability of teachers, support staff, transportation staff, and others needed to maintain school operations. We all need to take the appropriate actions to help mitigate the spread of the virus.
While our priority is to keep schools open, there is the possibility that due to staff illness and lack of available substitute teachers and critical staff, we may be forced to close a classroom or facilities for a temporary period of time. I assure you that this is our very last choice to deal with the issue before us, and we will do everything in our power to prevent closures from being necessary. I do not write this to alarm you, but to be fully transparent about this potential situation and ask you to think about a personal contingency plan should a temporary closure become necessary.
COVID-19 Case Information
We made the commitment since the beginning of this pandemic 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, the daily number of new positive cases of COVID-19 can be found on our website dashboard.
The Board of Education and I thank you for your continued support and understanding of changes that need to be made as we navigate this current wave of the pandemic.
Thank you for entrusting your children to the Ray-Pec School District.
Mike Slagle
