NCA Community,
I hope this message finds you all healthy and hopeful. I am very please with our families, staff and students in our efforts to work together to keep our building open. Thank you to all of you who have done your best to help our efforts.
Recently, I communicated that we had two positive COVID test results within our NCA community. These cases existed amongst staff. Today we were informed of an additional positive COVID test amongst our student population. We have been working with our County Nurse, School Nurse and the MDH Regional Support Team on all cases and have not found any close contacts, to this point, within the rest of our NCA community. If this changes, we will communicate with those close contacts directly.
You may have heard of the recent surges in COVID cases in the county, state and across the country. This week the county projects the weekly case rate numbers from MDH to be in the 40’s and for that number to continue to rise. Remember, this information from MDH is a couple weeks old but should be very accurate. The daily rates that the county is seeing are even higher. I want to remind everyone that these case rate numbers only identify positive cases, they do not communicate how many people are symptomatic or in need of hospital care. According to the CDC and MDH, most people who test positive for the virus make a full recovery. Although this should give us confidence it still requires us to respond appropriately. As a public school, we are required to follow the guidance and executive orders from the Governor and the Minnesota Department of Education.
As a result of this recent surge, the executive order and guidance from MDE, New Century Academy will be making a learning model change. We will finish the 1st Trimester in our current model and then start 2nd Trimester in distance learning. Details are as follows:
November 11, 12: Continue with the current schedule and learning model.
November 13: Early release schedule. Students will be dismissed at 12 noon so that staff can prep for the learning model change.
November 16, 17, 18, 19: Continue with the current schedule and learning model which includes Eterm.
November 20: Early release schedule. Students will be dismissed at 12 noon so that staff can prep for the learning model change.
November 23, 24, 25: NO SCHOOL for NCA students. Staff will be prepping for the learning model change and the start of 2nd trimester.
November 26, 27: Thanksgiving Holiday Break. NO SCHOOL for students and staff.
November 30 – December 18: DISTANCE LEARNING FOR ALL NCA STUDENTS.
December 21 – January 1: Holiday Break. NO SCHOOL for students and staff.
Please watch your email for more updates from the school office or from your students teachers. Thank you all for your work, patience and efforts to make New Century Academy the safest and most effective learning environment it can be.
Jason Becker, Director
