Hundreds of homeless Vermonters could lose housing by July 1 mynbc5.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mynbc5.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Friday, January 29, 2021 - 1:13 pm
BY MATT LINDSEY
North Country This Week
St. Lawrence County schools are fine-tuning their pandemic plans that are now required by the state.
On Sept. 7, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation requiring school districts and other public entities to incorporate a Pandemic Operations Plan into district safety plans.
“This is meant to prepare districts or other public employers for a potential future pandemic,” according to St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES Director of Communications and Marketing Rebekah Mott.
The bill states specific requirements for the plan to address.
“The SLL BOCES is also required to produce this plan, and a team at BOCES created a draft plan template that was shared with school districts to adapt to their own specific protocols,” Mott said. “The plan includes a listing of essential workers, an explanation of protocols in the event of a positive case of a contagious virus, a protocol for shifting em
WATERTOWN â No COVID-19 testing requirements are in place for tri-county area schools yet, and although no local districts fall within a âyellow zoneâ territory, districts across the region are planning ahead.
If a geographic area is deemed a yellow zone, the state Department of Health has made it mandatory for schools open for in-person learning to test 20% of students, teachers and staff at least once a week for as long as the school remains in a yellow zone. If the 20% tested reveal a positivity rate lower than that of the yellow zone, testing can stop, but if the testing reveals a positivity rate higher than the zone, testing will continue every two weeks.
Tuesday, January 12, 2021 - 10:58 am
BY JIMMY LAWTON
North Country This Week
St. Lawrence-Lewis County BOCES and all districts are working with local hospitals to set up on-site vaccination clinics for educators and school staff.
Although some faculty and staff have taken the initiative to get vaccinated on their own, officials say school employees should hold off for now.
“Public school employees should not be going through the process on their own,” SLCL BOCES Director of Communications and Marketing Rebekah Mott said.
Mott said that details are still being hashed out but said that setting up the on-site clinics will allow for a faster rollout on the whole and allow better tracking and reporting on district numbers.
WATERTOWN â Despite continuous record-setting new amounts of COVID-19 cases, including many positives among staff and students over their winter break, schools across the tri-county region will continue with instruction as planned though Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo mulls implementing new testing regimens.
Gov. Cuomo suggested on Monday that the state may move to implement a requirement that schools regularly test students and staff for the coronavirus if their county has a positivity rate above 9%, but in the days since then, the state has seemed to be holding off.
âWeâve seen no guidance from the Department of Health or Department of Education indicating a change from that protocol, so weâre still operating from the presumption of âif youâre in a cluster zone thatâs colored yellow, orange or red you do indeed test according to those protocols,â Jefferson-Lewis BOCES Superintendent Stephen Todd told the Times.