Happy Sunday Springfield School District staff, students, and families,
It’s Dr. McLaughlin, your superintendent of schools.
I am reaching out today with the updates I foreshadowed last week. As you know, on Monday the Vermont Department of Health will no longer recommend the utilization of masks. This is true both in schools and in all other settings. In light of this, our team has adjusted our COVID protocols. Our new protocols are available on our district page under COVID-19 information. I will also link them in the email I am sending out in conjunction with this robocall.
Please review those changes. Also please note that while the masking requirement is going away in our schools, we still encourage those that would like to continue to wear a mask based on their own health needs, or a general sense of safety, to do so. As a district, we will continue to provide masks for those who want them through the end of this school year.
Please also note that we will no longer update our COVID-19 dashboard with case information and county-wide COVID data. For the moment, we will leave our existing dashboard up, but this will likely be coming down in the next few months.
If you would like to see my recent explanation to the school board of the changes, I will link the video in my email.
SAPATV Link to Thursday's School Board Meeting: http://126.96.36.199/CablecastPublicSite/show/24607?channel=2
For the presentation including the history of our COVID response, you should start at 1 hour and 27 minutes.
For just an explanation of the changes go to, 1 hour and 55 minutes.
Also, I want to relay that while we--in conjunction with partners from around the state--are making these moves, our district and the Department of Health will monitor the track of the virus. If what is occurring on the ground requires a shift back to more stringent measures will do so, but my hope is that will not need to be the case.
Another important thing to know is that each of our schools will have its own path and timeline back to more normal operations. You should not expect that all aspects of your school will return to a pre-COVID style right away. Each school will need to make choices about logistics and programming for the remainder of the year.
Finally, I just want to thank all of you. It has been a long and grinding two years. In the beginning of March 2020, few of us could have predicted what a challenging period we would all be facing as a school community. So many of you have had to step up over and over again. It says a lot about our school community that we have done as well as we have. Of course, I know that COVID is not over. It still exists and will be with us for a long time, but I hope that this moment is an important milestone that sticks.
As always thanks for your time, attention, and your collective ongoing support of the children of Springfield.
I hope you and your family have a peaceful rest of your Sunday.