The Bedford Area School District appreciates the tremendous support and cooperation from our students, parents, and community. We recognize there are diverse and strong opinions about the pandemic. Nonetheless, we all must work together to keep schools open, provide a great education, and protect students and staff. The Bedford Area School District is taking additional measures following the Thanksgiving break in an effort to achieve these goals.
The district’s current mitigation approaches are allowing schools to stay open with a predictable schedule. During our ongoing efforts to plan and review data, we identified Thanksgiving break as a potential threat to our regular operations. We know families may gather and/or travel during this break. Additionally, many of our past graduates will return from a variety of universities to either visit or return home for the semester. Also, we know Covid symptoms generally take a few days to manifest. Given this potential for spread and the need to identify any potential spread, the Bedford Area School District will take the following measures: Tuesday, December 1st and Wednesday, December 2nd will be virtual days for all students. Additionally, there will not be any sports practices, scrimmages or in-person activities from Saturday, November 28th through Wednesday, December 2nd. Additionally, we ask all parents to actively monitor their families and to communicate any potential spread with their student’s building administration. We firmly believe these measures will help mitigate spread and avoid future disruptions to our educational program.
In addition to these measures, we continue to ask our community to help us stay open for kids. We found quick family responses to Covid symptoms and rapid communication with the district to be very beneficial. Additionally, we thank our students and staff for their commitment to masks and social distancing. Finally, a total community commitment to limiting the spread of Covid is very important as significant community spread and increasing Covid cases can pose a tremendous threat to in-person education.
In closing, we are proud of our mitigation efforts and recognize it is impossible to completely limit the spread of this infectious disease. Also, we sincerely realize these measures may cause a short-term inconvenience, but we feel they represent a strategic effort to avoid rolling cancellations or returning to complete virtual. Please support this measure and continue to help us stay open for kids!