April 06, 2022
Dear Staff, Students, and Families,
This letter is to update on the status of Maranacook Community High School.
The High School will remain remote for the remainder of the week: Thursday, April 7 and Friday, April 8.
As mentioned before staffing continues to be a challenge affecting teaching staff, substitutes, food service as well as the main office.
As of this letter we have had 7 more staff test positive across the district, with 3 of those being high school staff.
The Food Service department has been particularly hard hit with no available staff to keep this department running at the high school.
Maranacook Community high school has been identified in outbreak status as of March 30th. It will remain identified as such until at least Wednesday, April 13th.
CATC students transportation is available please contact the main office for details.
Any student/families that need food service please reach out to Jen Hall, Food Service Director. She can be reached through email at: Jen_Hall@maranacook.org, work phone at (207) 685 - 4923 ext. 1085 or cell phone at (207) 242-0814. Individual arrangements will be made to best facilitate the families needs. Please reach out at your earliest convenience.
All after school outdoor activities will continue to run as planned
At this time all other schools will continue to run as scheduled.
We recognize this is an unfortunate situation for our students. Please know that the decision to go remote is not one that is made lightly. At the high school level many of the teaching staff with Covid have been able to continue to teach their classes remotely, which has kept students connected and engaged. Please also recognize that schools are made of many departments and systems to effectively function, when one system or department is down it can usually be covered by others but when 2 or 3 of those systems go down the capacity to cover all pieces becomes exponentially more difficult to run “normally”. Being remote is NOT what we want for our students. We look to be solution oriented. For example, we have adapted so CATC students have alternative transportation to get to their programs, after school activities continue running as scheduled which is critical to keeping students engaged, and modified the remote schedule with flexible times to connect with teachers for extra support, to name just a few. We recognize this as a hardship for students and families and are doing everything possible to get back to in person learning as soon as possible. Our best case scenario is to return to in person instruction on Monday, April 11th.
We are asking all families to continue to use the Covid Screener (click to access) and to contact the school nurses should you fail the screener. It is VERY important to identify symptoms and seek guidance. If you would like a test please contact the school nurse who can facilitate this curbside as needed. We want to keep all of our students and staff healthy and safe. We urge everyone to err on the side of caution over the course of the next several weeks to help curb any future spread of COVID-19. Stay home if you are sick.
Questions can be directed to the principal or the school nurse by calling the schools directly. For general COVID-19 questions, dial 211 (or 1-866-811-5695). You can also text your ZIP code to 898-211 or email info@211maine.org. Call a health care provider for questions about your symptoms. More information can be found at www.maine.gov/dhhs/coronavirus or www.cdc.gov/coronavirus.
Sincerely,
James Charette
Superintendent of Schools