A sample school wall poster.
When Hamden students step out of summer break and back into the classroom next week, they’ll be starting the school year in-person and unmasked for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hamden’s new Superintendent of Schools Gary Highsmith has unrolled an updated “safe schools reopening plan” in hopes of continuing to keep infection levels low after the district rescinded its mask mandate last March following an impassioned — and chaotic — public Board of Education meeting.
Hamden’s first day of school is Tuesday, Aug. 30.
If staff stick to the guidelines, students will be taught that washing their hands is a “superpower” and instructed to mask up for at least 10 days following exposure to a Covid-19 positive person, per the Centers for Disease Control best practices. They’ll no longer be required to physically distance themselves from their peers or to cover their faces on school grounds unless going to the nurse’s office.
Read through the full reopening plan here, which urges parents to adhere to a “test-mask-go” system when determining whether to send their kids to school or keep them home as well as to follow a daily health assessment.
Together, those two policies state that students experiencing mild respiratory disease symptoms — like infrequent coughing, congestion, or a sore throat — may attend school in-person (given that there is no remote learning option this year) so long as they test negative for Covid-19 prior to arriving at school each morning that they have symptoms, are fever-free, do not live with anyone who has had Covid-19 in the past two weeks, and are able and willing to wear a mask consistently and correctly while at school.
The district has promised to provide students and staff with free at-home Covid-19 tests and masks upon request.
Highsmith noted in a recent interview with the Independent that the district will also organize booster clinics throughout town in the coming months — and that the most important thing to remember, despite the fact that the school system is not mandating a Covid-19 vaccine, is “that the most effective way to prevent illness from Covid-19 is to be vaccinated and boosted.”
Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.
