Superintendent Conrad’s Friday Update – October 23, 2020

Thank you to everyone for all of your hard work and your tireless efforts on behalf of our students! We all recognize that our success is due to the hours and hours of preparation and learning that our teachers, parents, administrators, and other school staff are spending preparing for students in person and in the hybrid model.

Our teachers are learning to instruct and instructing our students through technology simultaneously. An amazing feat when you think about the fact that they have done this in less than a year. Our families are creating positive learning environments at home too. This is without a doubt a Herculean task and I am so grateful to all of you for your efforts.

Thank you to our parents who continue to collaborate with all of us to do what is best for students. Our community efforts are inspiring. In these unprecedented times, our community has risen to the challenge. For that I am grateful.

DESE Guidance
This week we received information from DESE regarding switching between learning models. DESE is recommending that a school facilitate a in change models within a four to six-week period, this is up from the three to four-week period originally recommended by the department. We also received preliminary approval to use any potential snow days as remote learning days. This is a preliminary ruling and many details will need to be worked out before that can become a reality. Finally, the department also informed us that as they and DPH review cases they are looking to identify cases that are not related to schools but may instead be associated with long-term care facilities, higher education institutions, or correctional facilities. Please see the department’s COVID-19 website for more information at http://www.doe.mass.edu/covid19/.

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USDA extends to June 2021
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the extension of universal free meals to continue to be available to all children and teens throughout the entire School Year 2020-2021. This will allow us to leverage the Seamless Summer Option (SSO) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) to provide meals at no cost through June 30, 2021.

COVID-19
This week has seen an INCREASE in COVID-19 cases here in town and in the schools. Please note that I have sent a separate letter via email about COVID-19 cases at BHS. As a community, we moved back to yellow from green (10/22/20). This is not a surprise as many of our neighboring communities have also gone to yellow and red. Please continue your increased vigilance when it comes to maintaining social distance, wearing a mask, and washing/sanitizing our hands.

Impact Aid Survey (PL 874)
This law entitles Bedford to submit a Federal Impact Aid application, it is however dependent on our collecting data from families that are Armed Forces personnel and/or parents/guardians who work on federal property. All Armed Forces personnel are eligible regardless of where they are stationed including overseas deployment as long as the family residence is in Bedford or on Hanscom Air Force Base. For your convenience, we have set up a dedicated website which can be accessed at Federal Aid Impact Survey PL874.

Technology
I am pleased to tell you that you received an email today from the technology department that outlined our deployment of Lightspeed Relay. We have recently purchased the Lightspeed Relay system for all of our devices. The system will allow us to provide protection on all school-issued devices regardless of what network the device is connected to when devices are outside of our school buildings. For more information please go to Lightspeed Relay product information.

If you have any technology issue or concerns please contact [email protected]

Massachusetts and Bedford COVID-19 Information
We continue to use Governor Baker’s enhanced community data map which tracks COVID-19 cases and gives a colored rating from clear through red. This information is also being utilized by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to alert school communities about the risk in their particular city or town. That information can be found at MA.GOV Covid Dashboard as part of the COVID Dashboard information. Here in Bedford, we are fortunate to receive weekly COVID-19 updates from Town Manager Sarah Stanton. The updates will be provided each Friday. This is due to a change at the state level from Wednesday reporting to Thursday reporting. The information is always available on the Bedford Home News and Announcements page at Bedford Home News and Announcements.

As always, thank you for your patience, your participation, and your continued commitment to our schools. Wishing you continued health.

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