001hello this is chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools here with a brief update we've had school for seven days it's great to see everybody back in the buildings and all the activity that comes along with that we always have a few hiccups as we go but i think we're starting to hit our stride and getting some of those things ironed out some of the issues we have had unfortunately uh are centered around cobin we currently have eight students out that are covered positive staff member and that has caused some other issues with close contacts and and quarantines and many other things as many of you know uh one of the ways we've been trying to control that is by masking certain groups or or classrooms for a specific amount of time so currently we've had
002have had uh sixth through eighth grade in mass that should end after monday and then we also have a fourth grade class second grade class in that same boat and then and most recently one first grade class what that does is allowed allows us to keep kids in school and also not have further quarantines because if both students are wearing a mask one becomes positive the county has said that the other one does not have to quarantine we will still notify parents if your child is as close contact the county considers that low risk i'm also attaching to this update a flow chart or a quick reference guide that our school nurses nicole slack and stephanie dahl have put together appreciate their work on that because it is very confusing i've been in multiple meetings
003even today with the county and with wsu and and um been in contact with kdhe and it's confusing for us that deal with it every day so i can't imagine what it's like for parents know that if your student is affected by covid we'll have a personal conversation with you to try to walk through all this but we also wanted to have the quick reference guide just as some information because one of the another thing we're doing is we're starting some daily antigen tests on monday over at elementary east very limited numbers if you haven't got a call please don't just show up there for that test it's it's very limited numbers for close contacts and would always be only with parent consent um so we are not going to conduct any type of obviously
004any type of medical testing including cover 19 testing without explicit parent can sign consent so um that's going to be up to those that want that or don't want that one of the things we're trying to avoid is to end up where unfortunately our neighbors to the south wellington have ended up and when they announced last night that they're closing school until after labor day up until september 7th so we feel for them and hope hope that everybody stays well and that they can get through this in a timely fashion that does affect us some because we were our high school was scheduled to play volleyball and football with wellington next week so assistant principal at the high school heath elliott has been working to try to get other teams that we can participate with
005we will be hosting volleyball on tuesday mulvane will be here for sure and hopefully we'll have a third for that triangle triangular looking at friday for football i've heard that derby's open but that seems like probably not a good idea for us so hopefully there's a team out there that would want to come to clearwater and and have a game with us at night speaking of activities we have a lot of things going on today uh this evening across our community with the blue and white and all the activities that come with that volleyball football youth things and also the booster club is having a barbecue at the park from six to nine so if you can get out and enjoy that i would ask that as always we be aware of that coveted 918
006is providing some issues for us already this year so if we can just keep the distance and do some things that we know can help keep everyone well just good hygiene that would be greatly appreciated because again as in last year to get through this we're going to all have to work together i wanted a quick reminder that we have late starts every monday so coming up next monday everything will run 30 minutes late buses breakfast start times and everything is 30 minutes later than normal so again excited to be here feel blessed to be here starting my second year superintendent in clearwater looking forward to a great year as we continue to move forward we are working on a long-range plan about how we can move this district into an even better place great
007place to be a kid but my personal belief is we can always get better so 40 community members came together wednesday to start the process of how are we going to how are we going to continually improve our district so i'm excited about that as always when we go through challenging times let's come together not divide apart and i always like to say assume positive intent and i tell my kids what that means is everybody's doing the darn best they can right now in this moment and i think if we assume that we're able to have good conversations we'll get through whatever the 2021 throws at us and i think we proved that in 2020. so that's all i have for this updates mr cooper everybody have a good weekend and look forward to a
008great school year you