Rob Anderson, Superintendent, BVSD. On Tuesday, November 10, 2020,  during our Board of Education meeting it was announced that the Boulder Valley School District will move to remote learning, starting next week.

While my team and I remain firmly committed to providing in-person learning opportunities whenever it is safe to do so – it has become abundantly clear that we can no longer handle the situation on a school-by-school basis. Unfortunately, the contact tracing team has been overrun with cases and with growing quarantines, we simply do not have enough school or district staff to fill all the gaps.

Our public health partners are equally strained, which has delayed case and contact investigations. We worry that cases may slip by our safety network.

Additionally, significant changes to quarantines under Safer at Home: Level Orange have enlarged the size of quarantines. As more and more staff are pulled from buildings, we are having difficulty ensuring we have enough people to safely supervise all students.

Unfortunately, it looks increasingly likely that this situation will just become more challenging with Thanksgiving break just around the corner.  If the trend we have seen so far this school year continues to hold true, holidays and breaks from school lead to increases in cases in our community. 

For this reason, we have decided that all students will return to Home Learning until the scheduled beginning of the next semester in January (Tuesday, January 5), provided that case rates have improved.

We remain committed to doing whatever we can to serve the students who need our help the very most, which is why we are looking for ways to bring back students in our most intensive programs.

We will provide more information as it becomes available.  We understand that this will be very disappointing news for many of our families.  This is not a decision that was made easily, however we have an obligation to keep the safety of our students and employees at the forefront of these decisions.

We thank you for your continuing support.

(Originally published in the November 12, 2020, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)