Valparaiso Community Schools Families and Staff,
We anticipate that as of tomorrow the Indiana State Health Department’s dashboard will be updated to show Porter County to be in Red status. The Porter County COVID Alert Level has already been updated to Red status as a result of the Weekly Cases per 100,000 Residents (902) and the 7-Day All Tests Positivity Rate (16.3%).
As a reminder, we received guidance from the Porter County Health Department about maintaining an in-person learning option while the county is in Orange or Red status. Valparaiso Community Schools would move to fully remote for an individual school or the entire district ONLY IF one of the following three conditions is present:
- There is a government ordered stay-in-place mandate for the community, county, or state.
- An individual building or the entire district experiences a depletion of personnel critical to daily operations in the form that so many staff (teachers, custodians, food service, etc.) are out on quarantine that in-person learning cannot effectively be conducted.
- There is a fundamental breakdown in the designed system where rampant in-school transmissions occur.
The Return to Learn Draft that was shared with you last week has been under review and will be presented to the Valparaiso Community Schools Board of Trustees at their regular meeting on Thursday, November 19th.
We will continue to monitor guidance from state and local officials, staffing levels, and COVID-19 cases in our school community. We would like to take this opportunity to recognize the outstanding efforts of the school community in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in the schoolhouse. Please remain vigilant and continue at-home screening, wearing a mask, maintaining physical distance, regularly washing your hands, and sanitizing common touch areas.
Partners in Education,
Jim McCall, PhD
Superintendent of Schools