Dear Tiger Community,
On Friday, the district learned that one member of the high school community tested positive for COVID-19 earlier in the week. This particular case has had a wide-ranging effect on our district and extracurricular activities. The scope of it is so wide, it has taken the county and state contact tracers all weekend to uncover many of these components. In fact, they continue to work as of this writing.
We respect that each parent will address these COVID cases as they deem appropriate for their family. However, the Hudson Falls School District has a legal responsibility to provide a safe education for all students. We will not allow our students, your children, or any of our staff to be put at risk. Any symptomatic individual, anyone putting the health and safety of our community at risk, is unwelcome in our schools or at other school-related activities. We all want what is best for Hudson Falls! Further, we continue to cooperate with the county in their tracing and quarantine efforts.
We cannot stress enough that individual and small group choices can have an outsized impact. Because of the way our county and state tracers set the rules, they determine that large groups of individuals end up quarantined when any one individual attends school while symptomatic. In this current situation, due to a single positive case, not only were dozens of quarantines handed down, but our NHS Ceremony had to be postponed and already-short sports seasons were made one weekend shorter. Our health and safety efforts are only as strong as each of our personal efforts.
Those efforts are supported by the data we collect from our health status reporting app, Good2BeBack. It helps us to mitigate the impact of each COVID-19 positive diagnosis. We strongly urge all our students and staff to check in on the app daily. Other ways you can help us keep our doors open to students – wear a mask the entire time you are on campus and on busses. Avoid large gatherings. Avoid unnecessary travel. And visit the Washington County Health Department COVID-19 tracker page daily for updates.
Sincerely,
Jon Hunter, Interim Superintendent