Harlan Ptomey

Superintendent Weekly Press Release September 25, 2020

Dear Cedar Bluffs Families,

COVID RISK LEVEL: YELLOW

For the Week of September 28th, we fall back down to Yellow moving from at 2.00 to a 1.88 with Saunders and Washington Counties falling and Dodge rising. Saunders county was the biggest mover, falling from 2.00 to 1.75, while Washington county fell from 2.00 to 1.88 and Dodge county rose from 1.75 to 1.88. Remember the risk dial is based on a 3-week average, so although we read about the outbreaks in nursing homes in Blair and Ashland we fell back down in yellow for the week. Also worthy to note, Three Rivers has begun testing all people associated with nursing homes regardless of symptoms. Thus, healthy people that are testing negative will lower positivity rates.

COVID POSITIVE: 0-Students, 1-Parents/Family Members, 0-Staff, 1-Exposures at School

So, we have had our first exposure within our school, sort of. I say sort of because it was actually in our daycare at the school. For those of you who don’t know it has been a board goal to open a daycare in our school for our staff for the past 3 years and we finally accomplished that goal this summer. However, since we opened the daycare after school began not many of our staff got to take advantage of it and in this case, we are grateful. The daycare is owned and operated by the Fremont YMCA and they lease space at the school that we created for them. One of their workers tested positive for coronavirus and because none of the children were wearing masks in the daycare, they were all quarantined. They are required to wear masks when they come out of the daycare room and enter any area of the school because that is our rules, but the YMCA does not require masks in any of their daycares. Fortunately for the school, only one staff member had their child in the daycare during the time of exposure and so we have had to quarantined only that staff member with their child. Three Rivers has indicated that we should monitor for symptoms of any siblings of the daycare students, but they should be fine to stay in school since they are required to wear masks. I know we all hate to wear a mask, but this is exactly why we do. Three Rivers Health will send all our kids’ home for an exposure to a positive case. I would hate to see what that would look like for our families that would have to stay home from work to take care of kids, for the school to have to cancel all activities and go to full remote learning from an exposure. Please continue to do your best to help us stay in school. Also, we had a family who has students in both the secondary and elementary building who may have been exposure at work, that family choose to keep their children home until they got the results of their test which was negative. Again, we appreciate families thinking about the common good and doing the right thing so we won’t have an exposure. Lastly, on Thursday September 24 we were informed of a parent of an elementary student who tested positive. The student did come to school Monday through Thursday this week but has shown no symptoms. That student is now quarantined. We have sanitized and cleaned the room that the student attended and will be monitoring the students from that classroom closely over the next two weeks. Three Rivers confirms this is not an exposure since the student is not positive. Please stay vigilant in talking to your students, checking temperatures before they come to school and not sending them if they feel ill. We will all get through this together! #WildcatPride