Good afternoon Elm Hill families and staff,
This is Zach McLaughlin, your Superintendent of Schools.
As I reported last night, our district team spent today discussing Elm Hill’s COVID situation with multiple state-level partners including the Vermont Department of Health. At the end of those conversations, we came to decisions about Elm Hill’s immediate status and approaches to getting the current outbreak under control.
First, we made the determination that Elm Hill will remain closed through the end of this week and reopen next Monday, December 6th. With the high number of positive COVID cases at Elm Hill and the high likelihood of transmission happening within the school, we felt the health threat to students, families, and staff was too great to just reopen like this was not happening. Please note that this also means that Elm Hill students should not be attending All-4-One this week.
Second, we want to test all Elm Hill students and staff this Thursday. We will be offering drive-through PCR testing during the day. We are still finalizing the logistics of this testing and will give you an update tomorrow.
Effective testing is essential in helping slow the spread of the virus by identifying those who have the virus and enabling treatment or isolation. Our goal is to decrease transmission so that children can return to school in a safe environment.
If your child was identified as a close contact last week and was given testing dates then you can refer to the letter sent by our staff, you can either have your child test on the dates that were given or participate in the drive-through testing on Thursday.
If we are going to get Elm Hill reopened in a safe and healthy manner, we are going to need your help. I understand that this puts another hardship on families and will add to a growing sense of frustration. I hope that you will work with us to get through this difficult week and effectively reset Elm Hill for the path ahead.
Again, I will be providing additional information about Thursday’s testing in another robocall tomorrow. We still have many details to work out, but I wanted to get you this most important closure information as quickly as I could.
Thank you and have a good evening.