St. Barnabas Elementary School

We hope you had a restful holiday and were able to spend time with your loved ones. As we welcome students back into our classrooms from a well-deserved winter break, our highest priority continues to be the health and safety of our students, families, and staff. To that end, we continue to follow the health and safety measures in Catholic Schools are Open, We Continue to Soar! plan from the Archdiocese. The health and safety measures are in place to ensure students and staff are safe and that our schools can continue to be open.

1) Masks are required to be worn in the school building by ALL students. It is not optional. Students should arrive to school in a mask in order to enter the school building.

2) Our janitorial staff will continue to disinfect the building at all times. In addition to our own staff, we continue to contract with SterilMed to provide on-going santization of the building by continuously cleaning the building throughout the school day.

3) Medical notes of clearance or a negative PCR test is required for any student to return to school if absent. This includes any student who was out prior to Christmas break due to a COVID related illness (positive COVID test OR direct exposure within the home). As a reminder, should your child miss school for any reason, all of their work can be found on their respective Google Classroom pages. Teachers are expected to update their classroom pages daily.

4) The health screening will continue to be sent very Sunday via email and must be completed every week prior to entering the building by students, faculty and staff. As a reminder, should you answer YES to any of the questions, you may not enter the school building.

5) Please be sure to update the google form below to appropriately identify your child's vaccination status as partially vaccinated or fully vaccinated. You will also be asked to upload a photo of your child's vaccination card. While you are not obligated to share your child's vaccination status, this information will help us more quickly identify close contacts if quarantine is needed. Thank you for your continued efforts to keep our community and school safe.

https://forms.gle/Fs7ytNx7ENgEHq3s5

A few important calendar updates for this week include:

K-8 lunch service will not run this week. All families should have already received an email regarding this change. Lunch service will resume on January 10th, therefore, all K-8 students should bring lunch daily this week.
After school will run as planned this week, however, we will be sure to communicate with all families as soon as possible should staffing become impacted at any point.

It is imperative that parents or guardians email both Ms. Castro-Cruz and Ms. Iorio should their child test positive for COVID or be identified as a close contact due to a positive case within the home. Please be prepared to share a copy of your child's results and the date that symptoms began. This will help us ensure a speedy reporting process to our COVID team. Once the case has been processed, a date for return will be shared with you by either Ms. Castro-Cruz or Ms. Iorio.

Should your child test positive for COVID or have to be quarantined due to exposure within the home, teachers will make work available via Google Classroom.

Contact Information:

Ms. Natalia Castro-Cruz: n.cruz@stbarnabasschool.org

Ms. Lauren Iorio: l.iorio@stbarnabasschool.org

Prior to the Christmas recess, you should have received the letter below from our Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Michael Deegan regarding the Archdiocese's commitment to keeping our schools open for in-person learning. We are including a copy of his letter below.

As we prepare to welcome the Christ child, may you share in His light and love this Christmas season.

I remain so grateful for the outstanding and remarkable work of our principals, pastors, teachers, and staffs, who work so tirelessly on behalf of our wonderful children and families.

For many, the effects of the pandemic have changed the way we carry out some of our day-to-day activities – none more than caring for our precious children.

Recently, we have seen an unprecedented number of COVID-19 cases in our neighborhoods and communities and even those brought into our schools – a sobering reality that that pandemic is not over yet. In fact, with new variants, our collective efforts are never more important.

Like you, we want life to return to normal. However, our choices over the next two weeks will influence the outcome after the holidays. We have always trusted the judgment of our parents and will continue to do so. You know best! The Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York have NO plans to transition to remote learning, but we do want all our children and their devoted teachers to return to school on January 3, 2022, healthy and safe.

To that end, we all have a moral responsibility to our respective Catholic school communities to take actions to safeguard our health. Please consider testing, continue mask-wearing, and being vaccinated.

Catholic schools will continue to be rigorous in our approach, policies, and procedures in protecting your child. We recognize, as do you, it is our collective effort that will keep our children safer. Keeping our schools open safely depends on all of us doing our part. This website, and our COVID-19 web page, continue to be updated with resources for our families, including where to access testing, vaccines, and boosters, well-being resources, and others.

May the Joy and Peace of Christ this Christmas illuminate our days and weeks ahead, and His birth renew our hope and love for each other.

Sincerely,

Mr. Michael J. Deegan
Superintendent of Schools
Archdiocese of New York


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