Hi all,
Happy New Year and I hope that you all had a nice Christmas. As announced yesterday by the Department of Education, schools will reopen as planned tomorrow, Thursday 6th of January.
With the high number of cases on a daily basis, the fact that Omnicron is a lot more transmissible, and that lots of people cannot seem to get PCR tests even when they are required, we are going to have to be very careful over the coming weeks. As always, we ask that parents stick to the Public Heatlh advice about when to keep their children at home and to isolate if that is the required action to take. I will attach a quick isolation guide for Under 13 year olds to the end of this email, aswell as the statement from the Department of Education.
* Please can I ask that all adults dropping off or collecting their children wear masks when at the school.
* That children in the required classes wear masks (and have at least one spare one in their bags).
* that you contact the school by phone call (Karen is in the office from 9.30am-1.30 every day) or by email info@patrickswellns.com (when Karen is not in the office) if your child has had a positive antigen or PCR test as soon as you know.
Also I want to make parents aware at this point of the lack of substitute teachers around at present. We have been very lucky so far to be able to cover any position in the school when a staff member is absent. I can tell you that this can be very time consuming and frustrating. We will do our very best to cover staff shortages, but there have been cases in other schools where classes have had to be kept at home/sent home. Obviously this will be a last resort, but I do want to make parents aware of that a situation like this is a possibility.
Finally please find the links to some important documents below.
Take care,
David Bulfin
School Covid Plan- http://patrickswellns.ie/2022/01/05/patrickswell-ns-covid-response-plan-2021/
Here is the link to the statement from the INTO after yesterday’s discussions with the Department: https://www.into.ie/news/member-update-summary-of-meeting-with-minister-foley-and-officials.html
Isolation Guide for children under 13 years of age
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