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Superintendent's Weekly Update---November 20, 2020

N ewsletter Highlights: Update on COVID cases from this week Communication with school and families COVID testing Flu clinic Additional Data Hello, I want to start by wishing everyone a healthy, safe, and happy Thanksgiving. As with everything in 2020, this one will look different, but we have all become experts in adjusting and adapting to this new normal. As your new superintendent, I am grateful and thankful for the tremendous support of the entire Douglas Community during these challenging times. We all have a case of COVID fatigue, take time next week to recharge and relax and also reflect on what we have all been able to accomplish during these last few months; it was been remarkable. Update: Thank you to everyone for the continued support of the schools and our students and staff as we had to pivot from a hybrid model to a fully remote model. As I mentioned in the statement earlier this week, my hope is that we can return to school on December 1, but we need your help in this. P
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14 Day School Closing Information

November 17, 2020 Dear Douglas Community, I want to start off by saying how proud I am of the leadership team, teachers, our students, and the community. To date, we have only had three positive cases in the Douglas Public Schools and those cases were not contacted within the school. The safety protocols we put in place over the summer worked to keep students and staff safe in schools. The vigilance of our staff implementing these and the cooperative nature of our students have allowed us to stay incident free in school and open to this point in the year. I need to say thank you to everyone for this.  Yesterday during the school day I was made aware of two situations involving multiple members of the school community. We had these situations under control and we communicated them with the parents, students, and staff that we needed to inform. Last night, between 6PM and 8PM I was made aware of two different situations, involving multiple members of the school community, that I needed t
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Superintendent's Weekly Update---November 13, 2020

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Hello, As many of you are aware of, the Commonwealth changed the metric as to how they report out which communities are in the red. The Governor announced this at his press conference last week. Below are two charts; one of the old metric and the other of the new one which highlight the changes. OLD METRIC: NEW METRIC: We will continue to use the data provided to us by the Commonwealth to monitor the situation here in Douglas. I will also be recommending a change to our phases of learning model that the School Committee adopted in September to reflect the changes. I also want to emphasize that this is just a guide and we use additional data and resources to inform our decision making.  I would also like to share with you two statements that were sent to schools and communities one from DESE which highlights some of the changes in the metric and the other from the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS). DESE With the November 6 update by the Department of Public Hea
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Superintendent's Weekly Update---November 8, 2020

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Hello, On Friday, the Governor, along with the Board of Health and DESE released new guidance on how they will report out and interpret the data for each community. We have a meeting this week with DESE to learn more about the new metric and I will share it with you once I know more. Here is a link to the DESE website where they give a brief overview of the changes.    This week's data show: Douglas's Average Daily Case Rate: 12 per 100,000  Douglas's 14 Day Percent Posit ivity Rate: 3.5% MA  Positivity Rate - 2.3% Last week's data show: Douglas's Average Daily Case Rate: 6.84 per 100,000  Douglas's 14 Day Percent Positivity Rate: 1.97% MA  Positivity Rate - 1.8% Link To COVID Dashboard Over the last few weeks I have referenced that principals have taken feedback from you and staff and will implement some small changes to the current model. They have also finalized what their plans will be should we have to go fully remote at any point this year. The plans are
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