August 14, 2020
Dear Ramsey and Saddle River Communities:
Thank you for being so patient and understanding during the pandemic. If you are anything like me (and I hope you are not), your patience is wearing thin. It’s important that we continue to keep our emotions in check and maintain the perspective that we can only control what we can control. Let’s not take our frustrations out on each other. Everyone wants the same thing: a return to normal. However, we are ALL forced to bob and weave when new guidelines emerge from the state.
Don’t be fooled by the sparse words in this week’s headlines. Just this past Wednesday, the Governor signed an executive order announcing that our schools are open for in-person learning. In his next breath, he granted permission for districts to reopen with 100% remote instruction if they cannot implement certain safety and health protocols. However, we have not yet received the health and safety certification form.
That was as dizzying as the punches that led up to it.
Mid-March — Schools, which have thrived for more than a century on personal interaction, shut their buildings, send some students home with computers and, when up against the ropes, do their best to adjust to distance learning. Educators pour their blood, sweat, and tears into that fight.
May 4 — The Governor says this won’t be temporary, that schools must stay closed. We take deep breaths and stay in the ring.
June 29 — The Governor orders that schools must re-open for in-person instruction, and the NJDOE issues a long list of factors that have to be figured out. We plan staff development, hire staff and revise our curriculum. We scramble to measure classrooms, order PPE, and put “extras” like after-school activities and transportation on the back burner. We channel all our energies into repackaging a solid education into a sanitized, socially distant model because we are ordered to.
July 24 — We are days away from meeting the state’s deadline to present a comprehensive plan that includes in-person learning, and the Governor announces that schools also must offer a fully remote learning option. Is this Round 5? We lost count.
Aug. 12 — A week after schools are required to report how they would meet the list of health and safety standards, the Governor uses careful language to say a district could employ all-remote learning for all students … but only if they can’t meet the standards. They need a plan and a date for when they will return to in-person learning, because that is still the Governor’s goal for all New Jersey schools.
Even in the Governor’s own words, this is “Not a change of course.”
For those who asked why parents weren’t surveyed about the option to open Ramsey schools on a completely remote basis: school districts were never given the option. Is that an option now? I don’t know, because we haven’t received the safety and health checklist that certifies whether a district can be fully remote. As a colleague wrote, “Anytime health guidelines for public schools need to be ‘hammered out’ 6 months into a global health pandemic and 3 1/2 weeks before schools open, there may be a reason to pause and ask yourself, what could possibly go wrong?”
Despite the confusion this week, our primary focus remains the safe opening of schools for our students and staff, to provide the continuity of learning that we detailed in 76 pages and broke down to digestible pieces on the Ramsey Restart website. We want to be back in the classroom with our students, to get back to teaching and learning. Once the district receives the state’s promised certification form, I will work with the district’s leadership team and our legal counsel to review it. Have I mentioned we still don’t have it? We are 20 days from welcoming students back to an environment they love and count on.
We did receive this week, after a summer-long wait, guidance from the State Department of Health. We will take this latest information under consideration as well.
According to a recent NJ.com article:
— If one teacher or student in a school has a confirmed COVID-19 case, the school can remain open. But, anyone the person came close to at school will be asked to quarantine at home. “Students and staff in close contact with a positive case are excluded from school for 14 days.”
— If two people in the same classroom get sick, the school can remain open. But, everyone in the classroom could be asked to quarantine. “Recommendations for whether the entire classroom would be considered exposed will be based on a public health investigation.”
— If two or more people in different classrooms have confirmed COVID-19 cases within 14 days at the same school, the situation gets more complicated. The entire school could shut down if “a clear connection between cases or to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 cannot be easily identified.”
We will continue to share more information with you as we take what we learned this week to make adjustments to our plan. We also would not be surprised if we continue receiving information from the state to inform our plan — even though that plan was submitted to meet a deadline set two weeks ago. When we do, I will roll with the punches to make the necessary tweaks. I cannot ask you to be patient and understanding if I’m not leading by example.
So, let’s continue to put our emotions aside to put the children first. School is just weeks away. How we approach this with the children will help make or break how we get through this year. Our principals expect to email schedules by mid-week. We can do this by coming together.
Matthew J. Murphy, Ed. D.
Superintendent of Schools
Ramsey Public Schools
Twitter: @drmatthewmurphy
Facebook: @RamseyNJschools
Instagram: @ramseyschooldistrict
