March 8, 2021
Dear Families:
I wanted to take a moment to provide you with an update regarding COVID-19. The District was alerted this morning that an additional student at the Senior High tested positive for COVID-19. There are now six confirmed cases at IHS in the past two weeks. Contact tracing is currently underway and could result in additional quarantining of students. At this point, however, identified students were already quarantined when they became ill. Thus, no additional students or staff were affected. As a matter of practice, all students and faculty adhere to the District’s safety plan by wearing masks and are seated 6 feet apart from one another.
According to our Board-approved Health and Safety Plan, we could be required to close the high school for possibly as long as a two-week period, but after discussing this situation at length with the health department, high school administration, and school health offices, I have made the decision to keep IHS open at this time. I believe this action still falls in line with our approved plan.I made the decision to stay open for the following reasons:
- 5 of the 6 active cases are connected to the same event, and all other students associated with that event are quarantined and have not been in our schools since March 1, 2021. Essentially, in this case, the quarantine procedures accomplished what they are designed to do and isolated the group of exposed students from the rest of the population.
- The most recent case was not in school or at any school event during their contagious period due to our quarantining protocols.
We will obviously continue to monitor the situation closely, and should any other cases occur outside this isolated group, we will reevaluate the situation and communicate our plan with all of you at that time.
On behalf of the entire District, please know we are doing all we can to remain open to provide educational programming to our students while keeping safety at the forefront of our decision-making. Under the current circumstances, the quarantine protocols are working and we have no reason to believe that any other students or staff are affected by this situation. The cases are isolated to a small group of students who are already isolated from the general population of students and staff; closing the school is unnecessary at this time.
Our School Health Services staff has done an amazing job being proactive in monitoring for symptoms, contact tracing, and anticipating quarantines. I applaud the job they have done keeping our students safe, and I thank all of the students, staff, and families for your untiring support of their efforts.
Respectfully,
Mr. Michael J. Vuckovich
IASD Superintendent