Dear Parents, Staff, and Students of the Enfield Public Schools,
As you may have heard, we are going to continue with our hybrid learning plan until Friday, November 27, 2020. It was my intention to attempt to begin full, in-person learning on Monday, November 9, 2020; however, the recent uptick in public health data supports remaining in our hybrid plan for the time being. As I stated at our regular Board of Education meeting this past Tuesday, the leading indicator for schools to begin reducing the density within our buildings is ten or more new COVID cases per 100,000 residents, by county. Currently, Hartford county, which Enfield is a part of, is at 13.1 new COVID cases per 100,000 residents, putting our county in the moderate risk level, where the recommendation is to begin reducing the amount of people in our buildings. Fortunately, Enfield is showing lower figures than the State of Connecticut, as well as Hartford county, coming in at 6.3 new COVID cases per 100,000 residents. Although we are doing better than our counterparts, this figure has increased over the past few weeks, but we are hopeful this number begins to trend downward. With cases rising and significant concerns from public health experts about the upcoming holiday, I believe it is in the best interest of the Enfield Public Schools to stay the course on our current plan until after the Thanksgiving holiday, when more information regarding this recent increase in cases is known. I also want to make you aware that we are closely monitoring the concerns shared with us from public health professionals regarding the anticipation of higher infection rates due to the Thanksgiving holiday. I may be forced to alter our plans once again, and although I do not have definitive information at this point, I wanted to make you aware that things may change.
I have said from the beginning that we have never experienced anything like this before, and we have to remain committed to being flexible, as circumstances can (and have) change daily. Our experiences over these first two months have tested our resilience each day. The daily struggle to keep our buildings open with enough staff is real, and the character of our staff members to provide the best opportunities for our students has never been better displayed. The health and safety of our students and staff has, and will remain, my highest priority; however, I cannot overlook the impact our current environment has on our students. I realize that no answer is perfect, but I have made it my second priority to try to provide as much “normalcy” for children as I can. As much as I want to bring our students back in-person full time, the prospect of having to close our schools down for extended periods of time can, in my opinion, be even more detrimental to them. I take no pleasure in saying this, but the reality is that the more people we have in our schools and the more positive cases we see, the likelihood of closing down for a long period of time drastically increases. I want to be clear—I fully understand that some people reading this will not agree, and that is okay. One thing we cannot dispute is that we all have our children’s best interests in mind, and though we may have different ideas on what that looks like, we all have to remain committed to doing what is best for the students and staff of the Enfield Public Schools.
As I have said before, I hope this public health crisis will be over soon. Until it is, however, we all need to remain flexible in the midst of the circumstances we face, but we will never change our mission—providing the best and safest opportunities for our students.
Thank you - and stay well,
Christopher J. Drezek
Superintendent of Schools