September 4th Update

Dear Families,

The 2020-21 school year begins Tuesday, September 8, 2020. In order to keep our schools open and our community healthy, we are asking that people do not come to school when exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. We ask that every day each member of our school community does a self-check for COVID symptoms. Parents, please conduct these for your children daily.

There is a list of symptoms the Minnesota Department of Health has asked us to monitor every day. They are broken down into “less common” and “more common” symptoms. Those symptoms are:

More common:

  • Temperature of 100.4 Fahrenheit or higher when taken by mouth.
  • New and/or worsening cough
  • Difficulty breathing
  • New loss of taste or sense of smell
Less common:
  • Muscle Pain
  • New severe headache
  • Sore throat
  • New congestion or runny nose
  • Nausea
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhea
  • Excessive fatigue
  • Chills

If your child has ONE more common symptom or TWO less common symptoms, they MUST remain home. If your child has ONE less common symptom, use your best judgment to determine if your child is well enough to attend school.

We will be following the decision tree provided by MDH to determine how long your child should remain at home if they are ill. MDH decision tree – Click Here

If your child had close contact (within 6 feet for at least a cumulative 15 minutes) with someone confirmed to have COVID-19 at the time they were infectious, they MUST stay home for 14 days after exposure.

Public Health conducts interviews with confirmed positive cases, and they may call a person known to have close contact. The positive cases may also call their close contacts themselves and let them know they need to quarantine. In either scenario, if you know you had close contact, you must remain home for 14 days.

The current Pine County COVID-19 Case Rate data continues to support the decision to open school with In-Person instruction. The most recent two-week data reflects 4.81 cases per 10,000 people. Our school district remains in close communication with Pine County Public Health to stay up to date with the most current case trends. If the need arises we will shift our learning model to align with the Safe Learning Plan for 2020-21 from the Minnesota Department of Education. Parents and caregivers should have plans for children ready in case our school district would need to switch learning models. As a reminder, the thresholds for when the district may switch learning models are linked on the Reopening Webpage – Click Here

The educators of East Central Public Schools are excited to welcome students back to school next week. We believe we have plans in place to keep students and staff as safe as possible.

Go Eagles!

ANDREW M. ALMOS
Superintendent, East Central Public Schools
phone 320-245-6001 | twitter @almosandrew
[email protected] | www.eastcentral.k12.mn.us

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