001hello chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools with another update for you i've been doing these updates since july and was really looking forward to one that was not about covid but now that this one is about perhaps the worst winter weather we've had in 30 years i'm some of my excitement is gone but we are going to get through this together first of all i want to say thank you to many people that have made remote learning as successful as possible i've heard a lot of good things i know our staff has put in tons of effort students have put in tons of effort last week we had over 95 percent of our students attend remote learning which is uh as good or better than what we could could expect for attendance if we were
002on site so way to go and i know that took a lot of effort not just from students but parents in our community also realize that it's an inconvenience to many and know that we want to be back on-site school as soon as possible by now as parents probably most of you have received a notification that we are going to continue in remote learning for wednesday um know that part of the reason we are doing this remote learning is that it helps us meet our required number of hours per year without this we would be looking at trying to make up snow days on spring break or after the scheduled end of the school year which we are trying to avoid if we can keep learning moving forward today we've had several challenges that went
003into our that factored into our decision for tomorrow we have some broken water pipes in the district we have some non-working heaters that were honestly just not engineered for this kind of weather i know we have a teacher teaching remotely from our classroom that's 57 degrees today so appreciate that dedication and i'm sure she's bundled up and trying to stay warm in there snow removal has also been a challenge because these temperatures are hard on people and equipment the rolling power blackouts haven't been helpful but i have heard those are ending so that's more good news perhaps one of the most concerning issues has to do with our buses and about half of our fleet is not functioning today and unfortunately when the temperatures rise just a little bit some of those issues may not
004go away because of the way that diesel separates we had put in winter diesel and additives and taking the precautions that we needed to buses are plugged in but we're still experiencing some issues i know i talked to another superintendent i've actually sent some buses out to drive roads today to see how they were all those buses ended up on the side of the road and their mechanic has said they're looking at friday to saturday before those issues are going to go away so hopefully we'll be in better shape than that but we just never know i say all that to say just be ready for more communication from us if we have to change you should also be aware that our high school basketball games for tonight have been moved to thursday and we're
005really hoping to get those in at that time so i mentioned uh that i didn't want to talk about covid but i am going to talk about kobe just a little bit first of all our numbers should be low on quarantines because of the remote learning environment and i do believe this weather has kept more people at home so hopefully we'll be in good shape please let us know if your child is in quarantine due to being a close contact or a positive coveted so we have good information i also want to update you about some changes in quarantines for schools in scheduled county dr minz has updated those guidelines and has declared some areas as high risk and low risk i'll send out more detailed information but for now the short version is that
006if students are in a classroom and the positive person and the close contact are both wearing multiply tightly woven masks and they're wearing them correctly we would not have to quarantine we will still contact parents and let you know that your child has been a close contact even if they are wearing the mask and then it would be your choice if you feel like they should quarantine or not but the school would not require quarantine if those specifications are met so one thing you could do to help us prepare for that is make sure that the masks that your children have are tightly woven multiply and know that if you don't have that we can provide those we have some available and also make sure that your child knows how to wear their mask correctly
007so again we want to be back on-site school we know that that's best for everyone our students and our community we will get there soon it's going to be really strange that we're going to come out of this winter weather event and be three weeks away from spring break temperatures in the 60s soon sound really good again i appreciate everybody's flexibility understanding reach out to us as always if there's anything we can do to help you through this time whether it's remote learning or whatever it might be contact us we'll see if we can help appreciate everybody stay warm and safe out there take care goodbye you