Update from the Hanover School Committee 10/26/20
On behalf of the Hanover School Committee, we would like to thank the community for your support and to share an update on our vision for the months ahead. As a district, we have learned a great deal about COVID-19, and we feel very confident that our students and staff are safe when they are in our schools. This is only possible because of the work of our leadership team, teachers, staff, nurses, students, and you and your family. We also would like to acknowledge the incredible work being done by our nursing staff in collaboration with our town health and fire departments. They work tirelessly on testing and contract tracing each case identified in Hanover. We are one of the very few communities in Massachusetts that have such an impactful testing and tracing capability, through the use of our Mobile Integrated Health Unit (MIH).
While in the hybrid model, our schools have been preparing for all possible scenarios including a return to full in-person learning, and the option to shift to full remote learning for a period of time, but only if conditions warrant. We remain optimistic that we will not be required to revert to the fully remote model. We are committed to, and continue to plan for, the return to more in-person learning as we know that is the best educational and social environment for students, teachers, and families. We want to assure you that we are actively and collaboratively working to ensure that our plans have the greatest chance for sustainable success.
In order to move into a more in-person learning model, we will be looking closely at key indicators such as in-school transmission, ability to contact trace cases, source of the infection, and any local outbreaks or clusters as reported by public health officials and not from inaccurate outside sources. The color designation by the state for the town of Hanover is another indicator we will examine, but it does not dictate when (or if) our schools would have to change models.
To assist us in this work, and to keep the community fully informed, we have developed a new COVID-19 Dashboard on our website with current data for both the town and our schools (staff and students) that is updated daily. Moving forward, the dashboard will be the location where we report new cases and track students and staff identified as “close contacts” of an infected individual who are required to quarantine per public health guidelines. The combination of these two factors will help inform our decisions to ensure the best path forward.
Please be assured that our top priority is to safely provide more in-person learning for our students as soon as possible. We are using data to inform our decisions, and we are working with all of the people who can make this vision a reality.
Sincerely,
Leah Miller, Chairperson
Ruth Lynch, Vice Chairperson
John Geary
Libby Corbo
Peter Miraglia