Good evening Pine Bush parents and staff,

I have some good news! You might recall that we originally closed back on March 12 and 13 (two school days before everyone else) because a parent, who also worked for a district vendor had been symptomatic and had potential contact with multiple students and staff. That individual’s test results finally came back a couple of days ago, and they were negative.

I have heard from several others, who have shared their negative test results. I have also heard directly from two individuals who have shared their positive test results to the coronavirus. The County Health Department has told me they would only verify those results to me IF, by their protocol, they had reason to believe that those individuals could have infected or been infected by any of our students or staff. So far, I have received no such notification, and I was on the phone twice today with the County Health Commissioner, Dr. Gelman. Closing earlier than the rest may well have paid off for us.

I mentioned yesterday that we might change our food distribution for next week in order to both impose more limits on person-to-person contact and to help sustain our volunteer energy over the long haul. Today we agreed that beginning next week, we will only distribute food on Tuesdays and Thursdays. (This week was already limited to today, Tuesday and Thursday.) We’ll give two days of meals per child on Tuesday and three days of meals per child on Thursday.

We’re still taking requests to borrow Chromebooks via email or by calling the district switchboard, and we hope anyone who wanted the free Wi-Fi from Spectrum has by now called them to make an appointment. I still anticipate that we will be at this well past April 1 so we began gathering the people and resources today to plan for full-blown online instruction.

Finally, I want you to know that we could use some help with masks. We really don’t have any. If you have a sewing machine, we are working on patterns that folks could use to make masks. I’m told that Joann Fabrics has some already cut out and ready to be put together. They will give it to you free, including the elastic. You may want to call them if you think you can help.

Thanks for your patience through all this; I suspect we still have a good ways to go before this is over.

Tim O., Mains, Pine Bush Superintendent