001hello i'm chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools here to give you a brief update on wednesday december 16th first of all i wanted to let everybody know about calendar change that we have made for our second semester the kansas state department of education is allowing for schools to waive up to 20 hours of student instructional time if that time is used for teacher staff development so our district has made the decision to use february 5th first february 1st and april 19th as a couple of days we'll use some of those hours on so there will be no school on february 1st and april 19th and that is a change to our calendar i'd also like to make everyone aware of our current coveted numbers first of all they're they've headed in the right direction in
002the last couple of weeks and i want to thank everyone for doing the things that we know help mitigate the spread of cobit 19 i'm i know a lot of people adjusted thanksgiving plans we've we've been inconvenienced by not going out and about and we've been inconvenienced by wearing masks and and practicing social distancing but our numbers do indicate that those things are working so i want to encourage everyone to keep that up because that that's what's keeping us in school our current numbers we have one reported active student uh covet positive case so one student covered positive and one staff member that we're aware of so currently we have 34 students out for any coveted reason a couple weeks ago we were getting close to 150 out so that number is really incredible remarkable
003and we also have four staff members out at this time for any coveted reason our attendance has also been good for this time of the year the last several days we've we've ran about 94 or higher of all of our students on site um are actively participating in school so that's a that's a great number as well i want to mention a little bit about communication over christmas break so um we need to know if there are coveted issues over break as well particularly if a student becomes symptomatic on saturday or sunday we i'd like you to email me at ccooper usd264.org because we'll need to contact trace and see if that student was a close contact with any other students and then inform those families of that close contact as well as sedgwick county
004health department just to keep everybody safe so that's on the front end to break on the on the back end of break we come back on january 5th and if there are students who are in quarantine at that time or positive cases at that time i'd ask that you either email me or contact the school office which you should be able to do on january 4th january 4th will be a teacher staff development and work day and then students come back on the 5th because we really need to have a good record of who we're going to have on the 5th and and have a safe start back to school in january to to get things rolling in the right direction again that's really all i have i want to encourage everyone to continue to
005do the things that keep us safe that mitigate the spread of kobe 19 in our community so that we can keep having school on site i want to wish everybody a merry christmas and a great new year it's been a great time for me to be in clearwater even with the mess of coba 19. i'm glad to be here and look forward to getting to know this wonderful community even better next year take care you