To: MSAD 15 Community
From: Craig King, Superintendent
Date: November 13, 2020
Re: COVID-19 Update
I continue to be impressed with our students, staff, and families. Our students have been very productive academically. Our students have also done a great job of following the new safety and health precautions. As always, we appreciate the extra effort being made by employees and families to make sure our students are getting the education they need.
A Few Updates:
The Mills administration released new School Health Advisory Rankings today. The ranking for Cumberland County:
• CLOSELY MONITORING: Cumberland, Hancock and York counties join Kennebec County in experiencing notable increases in the new case rate. As such, these counties will be closely monitored.
This represents an uptick in the number of cases in Cumberland County. My recommendation to families and staff is to pay close attention to all recommended guidelines for health precautions, specifically: physical distancing, face coverings, and hand hygiene.
For those families considering travel over the holidays, refer to the MSAD 15 Return to School Plan which can be found on the district website, and the Maine Center for Disease Control COVID-19 Travel Page which is easy-to-use and gives lots of information to help Mainers make decisions about traveling out of state and hosting out-of-staters who come to Maine. Since this is a lethal virus with particular risks for the elderly and those with existing health conditions, families will have to exercise their best judgement.
There are many schools that have closed temporarily throughout the state. Some schools have closed because of a multi-case COVID-19 outbreak, others have closed while they conduct COVID-19 tracing on a single case, and others have closed because a critical mass of employees has been quarantined. We are being very vigilant in tracking all our data daily. We consider community transmission rates in Gray/New Gloucester, community incident rates in Gray/New Gloucester, and we monitor the health data of all staff and students. If and when we have to close schools, it will be based on sound data analysis and we will be cautious in our decision-making to avoid risks for our students and employees.
We have seven more school days until the well-earned Thanksgiving break. I wish you all well.
— Craig King, Superintendent of Schools
