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Roaring Fork School District hits vaccination milestone

Board meeting discusses COVID-19 updates, progress in vaccine distribution

All but 10% of the 1,000 Roaring Fork School District employees have now been vaccinated against COVID-19, Superintendent Rob Stein told the school board at Wednesday’s meeting.

“All our employees will have had the opportunity to get vaccinated by this Friday. Still 10% or so of about 1,000 employees who will not have been vaccinated. (We’re) pretty optimistic that those who have missed their opportunity so far will have another chance within the next week,” Stein said.

For staff members who are not vaccinated by this Friday, more dates will be presented to them for the future, Stein said, and for those who are undecided on if they want to be vaccinated at all the district will also follow up with more information.



Stein also went over the strategic principles the district uses when navigating the pandemic. The first is wellness, then belonging and engagement, third is mastery, fourth is equity, and the fifth and most recently added is collaboration.

“We always go back to the mission and look at are we helping every student to develop the enduring knowledge, skills and character to thrive in a changing world,” Stein said.



Along with the top two priorities comes the responsibility to reduce virus transmission as much as possible and maintain in-person, face-to-face learning when it is safe for faculty, staff and students to do so.

“I just hope the board will think about (these principles) because so often it’s easy for us to stray to whatever presents in the moment and forget where we’re trying to go or how we’re trying to get there,” Stein said.

Based on those priorities, no decisions on senior graduation festivities will be made until April 1, Stein said. He also added that because RFSD is keeping students’ and employees’ in mind first, and aside from athletic events there will only be group events held with 30 people or less, and schools are not allowing community members to rent out space as of now.

An upside to the vaccination milestone for faculty is how with the warm weather coming, field trips for cohort groups are starting to be planned once more.

“We are allowing some adult volunteers to help with those things because we need more adults to supervise kids in the field than we do in the classroom. But we’re not letting non-members of the cohorts on our busses. We’re transporting our students according to our transportation guidelines within their cohorts, but if there are volunteers or other staff then they need to travel separately,” Stein said.

jpeterson@postindependent.com

 


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