001good evening chris cooper here superintendent of clearwater schools wanted to give everybody a brief update of where we're at starting into 2021. we did make it to 2021 unfortunately some of the issues that we were dealing with in 2020 do still exist and namely cobit um when we ended this semester or ended december before break we were down to two positive cases in our entire district with staff and students when we returned we were at 10 and then also some of those who were on quarantine because of being a close contact over break also have become positive so as of today we have 10 students who are covered 19 positive and 3 staff members we are we have 55 students and 8 staff members who are currently out for some coveted reason we were a
002little short on substitutes today i appreciate everybody coming together and covering the classes that needed to be covered and taking care of students in that way i just want to encourage you as we do go forward to continue to practice good mitigation strategies continue to keep students home if there's any sign of illness or sickness and also communicate with the school when that happens and let us know if there's any close contact outside of school as well so we can keep this thing under control i want to remind everybody that we have added two non-student days to the calendar this spring february 1st and april 19th will now be professional learning days for staff and we'll have no students on those days so i just want to give everybody plenty of time to plan accordingly
003we are also out of school on martin luther king day coming up a week from next monday so no school or staff on that day i hope everybody was able to enjoy the holidays some as students were out over break it's a strange season but i want to encourage everybody to come together as we continue to face this challenge unfortunately we're not out of the woods yet with this uh coven 19 issue and and now maybe the time we need to buckle down uh as hard as we have and try to to keep this thing under control keep kids in school each and every day so that's all i have for today as i said i wanted to make a just let you know where we're at as we we came back from break all
004of our classes are in session but but our numbers are um concerning they're not as high as they were at one point around thanksgiving but they're getting close to those numbers again so i want to encourage you to encourage your students as well to continue to practice the strategies that we know can help prevent the spread of this disease that's all i have for today it's mr cooper signing off uh have a great weekend and uh we look forward to what 2021 is going to bring take care you