Sisters and Brothers,
As you may have heard, in addition to those cases of Covid-positive staff members reported across the district last week, the Haverhil Public Schools have confirmed the District’s first cases of staff-to-staff transmission inside the Consentino School. Staff there are working remotely through Wednesday, and the District has worked with Pentucket Medical Associates to set up a drive-through testing site for all building employees to receive free rapid-result testing tomorrow (and Tuesday) if needed. All Consentino employees should find information on how to register for a testing time in their work email and I urge all of my Charger colleagues to make sure to get tested.
Prior to this, the District had already announced that all instructional staff could work remotely for PD days this week, in addition Wednesday. With staff at multiple buildings already quarantining as close contacts, and no discernible reason why we should take any unnecessary risks, I encourage all who can work from home to do so for the next three days, especially if your building has had a positive case in the past week where contact tracing is still underway. Even without a positive case in your building, transmission rates are on the rise statewide, and we should do all we can to protect our union siblings who are not able to work from home at this moment, such as our clerical staff and security guards. We are working with administration to allow clerical employees to work remotely on Wednesdays like other educators can (for as long as buildings may remain open), but for now we can limit their exposure and reduce the risk of contributing to the spread of the virus.
For those buildings that are open, and especially for staff who do work in person still, representatives will soon have thermometers purchased by the HEA to help all members record the temperature of their work space. record your temperature in this Google Form.
The Action Team is meeting tomorrow at 4:30 to go over the data collected last week and discuss if and how we should respond as a union to the rise in cases within our community and our current frigid/sweltering working conditions. Team members and building representatives will be able to provide you with a link to join tomorrow afternoon. If you don’t know who to contact, reply to this email.
Until then, please be safe and take care of each other.
In Solidarity,
Anthony
Anthony J. Parolisi
President
Haverhill Eduation Association