Dear Families,
I am saddened to announce that tomorrow – Tuesday – will be our last in-person school day this semester.
As much as it would have been great to finish the week, after speaking with local doctors and epidemiologists and several of you, the balance of the efficacy of in-person teaching and the feeling of it being too risky has shifted.
Community spread is happening quite a bit on Orcas as well as San Juan right now. Seven out of nine people tested on Orcas came back positive today. The contacts of those seven were all tested today in a big ring testing event; we won’t know those results until Wednesday.
Please use tomorrow to ensure that you get any materials you need to take home for the end of the semester: this week, the two weeks after Thanksgiving, and then finals. I recognize that this is not ideal and it will challenge B-day teachers to connect with all their students.
Interactions inside without masks with anyone but one’s immediate family is too risky at this point and has been the cause of much of this recent spread. Now is the time to forgo pods. Now is the time to stay within the family so we can quickly turn this around.
For those who did not hear Inslee’s press conference yesterday, he said it well: “There is light at the end of the tunnel…This is a temporary situation. We will get back to normal…We brought cases down before and we can do this again.”
Thanks for your understanding and ability to pivot to remote schooling. – LP
