The Administration Building of the Beacon City School District. Photo Credit: Katie Hellmuth Martin — The Administration Building of the Beacon City School District.
*Photo Credit: Katie Hellmuth Martin*

Superintendent Matthew Landahl addressed families in the district Wednesday evening via webinar call about how the district would be moving forward in the second half of the 2020/2021 school year. Beacon has been one of the only districts in the region to begin and remain on a Hybrid model, which means that kids can chose to either be Hybrid (attending school 2 days per week on a Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday rotation), or be 100% Remote. Students with Special Needs are in school 4 days per week. All students are home on Wednesdays for Remote Learning.

The part-time in-person model for Hybrid was decided upon in order to comply with social distancing requirements set by the state. With the school’s population, as compared with other smaller, sometimes private schools, this needed to be done, Dr. Landahl has said consistently throughout the school year.

Dr. Landahl discussed the latest on staff vaccinations; Dutchess County guidance on changes in what is required to quarantine should a student or staff member test positive for COVID-19; decisions on when schools go remote temporarily; and the introduction of the voluntarily testing program intended to get a read on positivity rate in the district for asymptomatic students or staff.

Teacher & Staff Vaccinations

Dr. Landahl said that unlike another vaccination situation he worked through as the Principal of Greer Elementary School in Charlottesville, VA during the H1N1 period, vaccination are selective and not made possible through school roll-outs.

He told A Little Beacon Blog: “They did mass vaccinations by school at the time. The current vaccine is not set up for children. The vaccine right now is definitely being distributed on a very individual basis for 1B people, meaning every individual has to set up their own appointments. I dont have the ability to organize a vaccination event in the district for district staff and faculty. Vaccinations will be administered to staff in medical facilities when staff makes an appointment at such a facility.”

Governor Cuomo announced on Monday (1-11-2021) that teachers (along with other group types of people) are able to be vaccinated now, in accordance with Governor Cuomo’s prioritized roll-out he designed. However, according to the Governor, due to federal supply levels, New York State does not have that many vaccine doses, so the opportunity to get vaccinated may be slow. All people are instructed to call their health care provider to get their vaccine, or select pharmacies who offer it, like CVS, and appointments are required.

When A Required Quarantine Is Needed If Exposure To Student or Staff

When a student or staff tests positive, the district communicates directly with the person to find out if they were already isolating, or if they were in a school building. Dr. Landahl said that based on feedback from these contact tracing learnings, most students were already isolating at home, or were already 100% Remote. If the parents or caregivers were aware of someone else in the house who tested positive, families for a large part kept their children home.

Dr. Landahl indicated that based on feedback from families throughout the results of contact tracing the last half of the year, settings such as being in a gym class together, or other wide space, might be too broad and should not trigger a quarantine for people near the positive person. Dutchess County, it seems, has relaxed its guidance, which Dr. Landahl included during his presentation:

“Dutchess County Department of Behavioral and Community Health (DBCH) will work with schools to determine the specific exposures within the classroom and school settings by identifying only those individuals who must be considered ‘close contacts’ as subject to the mandatory precautionary quarantine. The definition of close contact includes spending 10 minutes or more with a confirmed COVID-19 case while standing within 6 feet of the individual. Wearing cloth masks does not impact exposure.”

Dr. Landahl clarified that simply wearing a mask while standing within 6 feet of someone did not excuse a person from needing to quarantine if they were within 6 feet of the individual for 10 minutes or more.

Dutchess County guidance continued: “DBCH may consider other factors including virus strain, as part of the case investigation to determine the risk of exposure on the particular circumstances of the exposure. DBCH and/or New York State Department Of Health (NYSDOH) reserve right to issue and enforce mandatory quarantine orders for classroom-based exposure incidents when necessary.”

BSCD’s Goal Is To Stay Open - Uses These Factors To Decide On Going Temporarily Remote

Feedback from parents and caregivers during the meeting via the chat session in Zoom was mixed between wanting the district to close and go Remote only; fearing that the district would close and go Remote only; liking and approving of the current system; and wanting the district to open for more days during the week.

Dr. Landahl emphasized that in New York State, the decision to close temporarily or full is up to each district. There is no formula for closure. While Governor Cuomo had been using color codes before, Dr. Landahl said, the Governor had not been referring to them lately. Dr. Landahl said that the state and the county do look at hospitalization rates to indicate a direction, and that Dutchess County may have other information that may trigger guidance to a particular district. Otherwise, there is no formula or requirement for closure.

From the presentation, factors that impact the decision to go remote include:

Time needed to conduct contact tracing. If the knowledge of a positive case happens late and night, and there is indication that exposed people are involved, a temporary closure could happen, simply to give time the next day to reach out to individuals, and reduce risk of further unknown/known exposure.
Number of people quarantining. If a large number of staff is quarantining, for instance, it would be impossible to keep a building open to function.
"Most of the confirmed cases we get now, the individual has been out of school for a number of days,” Dr. Landahl stated in his (these) bullet points.
Department of Health. If the county issues guidance based on information they have.
State guidance or regulations. If New York State issues guidance.

Voluntary Testing

The Beacon City School District has voluntarily signed up to participate in the ability for staff and students to get tested for free at a location at one of the buildings, the first may be at the Beacon High School. This is a voluntary offering and not required by students to undergo. Parents will be able to be with their children during the test. The first students to be offered it will be Hybrid students, who go into school buildings, and then depending on usage of the tests, may be expanded to Remote, Dr. Landahl said.

The purpose of the testing is to get a better picture of if there is an asymptomatic positive cases in the buildings. These tests will be the “rapid” tests, which have been talked about as not being as accurate as the PCR lab tests. Dr. Landahl said that from his reading, the rapid tests are more prone to give false negatives, and that if it delivers a positive response, he said, the result will be taken into consideration.

This may start the week of January 25, 2021, targeting the days of Mondays and Wednesdays as testing opportunities, which would be open to all ages from the Hybrid in-person group. A testing center may be set up at Beacon High School, either inside or outside. A Virtual Consent form will be sent out next week, and FAQs and a video as well, said Dr. Landahl, to help people understand the offering.

Dr. Landahl mentioned how long the line was at Pulse MD when he got tested one day, which has been consistent with A Little Beacon Blog’s findings as well, since before Thanksgiving, which is when lines at several urgent cares filled up with people who wanted to merge households over the holidays. The closet location to get a free test for Beaconites is Bear Mountain, despite the marketing that that Governor Cuomo does that indicates getting a free test is easy.

A Little Beacon Blog doesn’t usually make recommendations, but in our experience, PM Pediatrics continues to be the best choice for testing kids (adults who accompany them can also get tested; walk-ins accepted), Caremount for adult testing, and patients of Sun River Health System (previously HRH Health Care on Henry Street in Beacon) offers testing to their patients only (no walk-ins, and appointments are needed).

Local District Response To Closures - Up To Districts, Not To State Standardized

Chatter amoung some parents in social media has been that the school will be forced to close for some reason. Dr. Landahl answered that as of now, and as of the whole time during the pandemic after the schools opened for the new 2020/2021 year, the decision to close has been at each district level, which indicates that local communities can know how things are working, and make safe decisions. He stated that he appreciated that local decision ability.

Most Cases Are Coming From Home, Not School

A question from a participant on the call was if the students were safer doing 100% Remote Only. Dr. Landahl stated that he believes the opposite to be true, that children are safer in the schools where social distancing is enforced, from their classroom to the cafeteria to gym to recess. At home, parents and caregivers can get lax.

This writer can attest - as a person who got COVID-19 - it walked through my front door at home - not from the school, but from us not recognizing the symptoms of an achy back - where it could have been picked up from a number of places (office building, gas station, who knows).

Fortunately. My husband is tested regularly for free by his job, and that is how we knew we had positive cases in the house. When we learned of his positive result, I kept my children home and out of school, even before they got tested. Once they got tested and one positive result came back for 1 of my 3 children, they had already been isolating, and our case did not warrant a closure of the school. It did trigger a robo-call from Dr. Landahl, however :) (no one’s names are ever mentioned, but we knew it was us - we made the robo-call!).

The school nurse called to check on us regularly, and did the math on our quarantine release date, if our symptoms had stopped, which they did.