Curley School will have to make up 3 days or reopen early, Edu. Commissioner says

The Curley K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, which shut down due to a coronavirus outbreak, will have to reopen early or tack three additional school days onto its calendar, said Education Commissioner Jeff Riley, partially denying the district’s request for a waiver.

At least 46 people at the school tested positive for coronavirus from Oct. 22 to Nov. 7 across 21 different classrooms which prompted the shut down from the Boston Public Health Commission.

The school closed on Wednesday and was set to reopen on Monday, Nov. 22, which was squashed by Riley who appeared to chastise the district for closing the school without appropriate consultation with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

He said prior to the closure, DESE staff recommended that the Curley begin to quarantine individual classrooms which BPS officials did not do.

“We are left to wonder if the whole school closure at the Curley could have been avoided if progressive interventions recommended by DESE were implemented last week, such as quarantining individual classrooms or grade levels,” Riley wrote in a Thursday letter to Acting Mayor Kim Janey and BPS officials.

Riley said he would count four remote days toward the 180 day school year requirement, which will include instruction up until Nov.16 — three school days short of the district’s intended return.

Riley said if students cannot return by Nov. 16, the additional three days will need to be added to the calendar and made up.

He added, “We have discussed the need for BPS to coordinate more robustly with DESE at the outset of any significant case increases going forward, to receive appropriate guidance related to COVID-19 protocols. As such, no future requests for waivers would be considered unless the district coordinates with DESE to follow the progressive process currently in use across the rest of the state.”

While the school is closed, Riley asked the district to complete contact tracing efforts, create a plan for close contacts of infected individuals and set up a testing program on Sunday to prepare for the school’s reopening.

Robert Orthman, whose son attends the Curley, said, “It’s very frustrating that parents weren’t given any warning of how much the virus had traveled throughout the school and that BPS didn’t have the capacity to test and trace the cases.”

He added “And now to learn these remote days might need to be made up at the end of the year, it’s just a lot.”

Orthman asked that Riley “be reasonable with parents and kids stuck in the middle of all this.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/321Mq9f