USD 353 Superintendent Hatfield: Administration is expanding health decision-making process

September 22, 2020 Cueball

Sumner Newscow report — The following is an update by Wellington Superintendent Adam Hatfield:

————

Dear USD 353 and Wellington Community,

Adam Hatfield

As many of you are aware, the Wellington Board of Education had a special meeting on Thursday, September 17 to discuss the USD 353 reopening plan. I want to take a minute to thank everyone for their input last week whether it was in person at the BOE meeting, via the survey or emailing me or the BOE. We appreciate everyone’s perspective and feedback.

We’ve taken much into consideration and we still feel very strongly that it is in the best interest of our students and community to use health care professionals to guide our decisions. However, we feel it’s important to expand our decision-making process to include more health care professionals. Currently, we are just using recommendations from the Sumner County Health Department. Our new panel will include Dr. Shana Jarmer, Dr. Lacie Gregory, Kelsey Curry-Swingle, APRN, Holly Parkey, RN, Lexie Klausmeyer, RN along with the Sumner County Health Department.

I will be talking with this committee on Mondays and, using data specific to COVID-19 numbers in Wellington, Sumner County, and our schools, we will make a decision as to what phase we will be operating in. As a reminder, the phases are red (remote), yellow (hybrid), and green (full in-person). We will issue a statement with our recommendation each Monday.

This committee was in discussions yesterday and has made the recommendation to stay in the yellow hybrid model for next week, September 28-Oct. 2nd. We will be following this recommendation next week.

Again, we appreciate your feedback, patience and support. It is our hope by working together we will be able to keep our schools open and our students, staff and community safe.