Update

This week is our 35th week for the 2020-2021 school year.

Right now, as we work to finish this school year strong, we face not only COVID-19 but also fatigue. Stakeholders at all levels are tired and worn out. With 15 school days remaining, I encourage everyone to stay focused, and continue to work together to make this end of the school year the best possible for our children/students. 

Overall, we have been able to navigate through the pandemic and COVID-19 fairly successfully.  We have had a low rate of positive cases and quarantines, but last week we experienced a pocket of positive cases (3) within our underclassmen at Hemlock High School. 

This pocket of positive cases led to 33 quarantines. Although in the big picture, 3 cases and 33 quarantines represent less than 1% of students testing positive and less than 10% quarantined, we elected to pause our face-to-face at our high school last week to re-evaluate our procedures/protocols, conduct a deep cleaning, and examine the data. In doing so, I can assure you that the safest place for children is school; due to all the protocols and cleaning procedures, the transmission of COVID-19 is extremely low.  It appears that this current pocket of cases and most of the other cases we have seen can be attributed to community spread and not spread through the school. 

Yesterday, the Saginaw County Health Department changed their recommendations into an order requiring close contact 10-day quarantines for individuals within 6 feet for 15 minutes or longer of a laboratory positive tested COVID-19 person, which we will need to continue to follow for the remainder of the school year. With this in mind, I need to continue to urge parents to keep sick children home; this helps protect our face-to-face instruction and services from disruption. Again, we only have 15 days of school left. 

Click here to review our COVID-19 Dashboard with data updates in real-time. This link brings pertinent information together into one easy-to-access place.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let me know.

All the best,

Don Killingbeck, Supt. 

(989) 642-5282