January 18, 2022

Dear Beacon Community:

I wanted to provide an update on changes from the state and county level in terms of schools and COVID-19.   You may have seen in the media the past few days that formal contact tracing efforts are winding down, and orders of quarantine will no longer be issued by the County, or by schools on the County’s behalf.  You can link to these changes here and here. Despite these changes, our efforts will be very much the same as they have been in the past and based on proactive communication between members of our community and the district.  

A huge thanks to our school nursing team for working so diligently through all of this the past few years.

It is still vitally important to be on the lookout for symptoms and keep your child home and contact us if your child has symptoms, regardless of vaccination status.

If your child tests positive for COVID with a test:

• Keep your child at home.
• Please notify your school nurse, Hannah Aakjar (Nurse Manager) at aakjar.h@beaconk12.org as well as Ann Marie Quartiron (Deputy Superintendent) at quartironi.a@beaconk12.org for guidance and information regarding possible close contacts within the school. 
• Notify the county electronically at dutchessny.gov/covidpositive.
• We will be back in touch about when to return to school.

If there is a positive case of COVID-19 in school:

• We will still notify close contacts by email (or phone if there is no email on file) of the need to participate in our Test to Stay program or quarantine as appropriate.
• We will still update the community with case numbers at schools and other relevant information in regular email updates. There will come a time when we start winding down communication on cases, we will let you know when we intend to do that.

If you are notified that your child is a close contact within the school setting: 

• There is no need for your child to quarantine if: your child received a booster when eligible, received their second dose of COVID vaccine within the last five months, or had a confirmed case of COVID-19 within the last 90 days. For reference on booster eligibility please see this link . 
• Your child may need to be quarantined for five days (last date of contact is Day 0) if they are not vaccinated or are eligible for a booster and have not yet received it. 
• Even if your child must quarantine, they are encouraged to attend school by participating in our Test to Stay (TTS) program. NOTE - Testing strategies such as TTS cannot be used for participation in extracurricular activities (ie. school sports, clubs, etc.) per New York State Department of Health.

How Does My Family Participate in Test to Stay?

• You will be notified by school staff if you can participate by giving a registration link to sign up.

You can contact Ann Marie Quartironi at quartironi.a@beaconk12.org or Hannah Aakjar at aakjar.h@beaconk12.org if you have questions about participation in our Test To Stay program.

Sincerely,

Matt Landahl, Superintendent of Schools

Superintendent Update January 14, 2022

Happy Martin Luther King Day!!!

Just a reminder that we have a three day weekend to honor the life of Martin Luther King Jr.  I think this website has many great speeches, pictures, and other fascinating information: https://projects.seattletimes.com/mlk/index.html

Rapid COVID-19 At Home Test Distribution Sunday, January 16 1:00-2:00 at Rombout Middle School.  Just drive up and have your children’s names, grades, and schools on a piece of paper  (yes we accept the back of old receipts!) and we will give 1 kit per BCSD student.  We will only be out there for an hour because it is supposed to be cold.  If you can't make it, we will send some home via backpacks next week, we will send out a link.

COVID-19 Cases Today

District Total- 7 cases

RMS- 2 cases

BHS- 1 case

JVF- 1 case

Glenham- 2 cases

Sargent- 1 case

South Ave- 0 cases

Have a great weekend!

Matt Landahl

Dear Beacon Community:

I wanted to provide a quick update on COVID-19 cases.  The state reporting mechanism for cases in schools does not operate over winter break and those are the cases we report to the community.  By that standard, we have one case of COVID-19 to report to you today at Beacon High School.  Individuals needing to quarantine or test to stay have been notified.

Over break, we had close to forty cases of COVID-19 reported to us from families and staff.  Many people did not have access to tests over the holidays so the number is probably higher.

From the at-home rapid tests that were passed out on Sunday, we had eighteen positive cases reported to us Sunday evening.  These cases were across all six of our schools.

I want to take a moment to commend our families for being so diligent in reporting cases to us, letting us know about symptoms, and using the at home rapid tests.  All of these efforts help us!  Thank you!

I also want to commend our staff today for a strong start after winter break.  Thanks for everything you do!

Tomorrow or later this week, I will go back to the usual way I report these cases to you.

Sincerely,

Matt Landahl