Clarkstown Coronavirus: District Starts Holiday Remote Schedule

NEW CITY, NY — In Clarkstown, six of 10 schools and the district office are inside Rockland County's yellow zones.

All the district's schools have started an off-again, on-again schedule that will continue through the holidays and into 2021, to provide the school community with time to address the recent increase in positive cases in the county and as a preventive measure, said Superintendent Martin Cox.

The schedule:

• Monday, November 30 through Friday, December 11 (following Thanksgiving Recess) – full remote instruction for all students.
• Monday, December 14 through Tuesday, December 22 – In-person hybrid instruction
• Wednesday, December 23, 2020 through Friday, January 1, 2021 – Schools closed for Winter Recess
• Monday, January 4 through Friday, January 15 (following Winter Recess) – Full remote instruction for all students
• Monday, January 18 – Schools and offices closed in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
• Tuesday, January 19 – In-person hybrid students return to buildings

Staffers in the district office will work remotely. Staff members in the buildings within the designated yellow zones — Laurel Plains, Link, Little Tor, New City, Woodglen, North High School— will not be permitted to access their building during the remote instruction period.

The situation is really a continuation of what's been going on since September, Cox said in a message to the community on the district's website. "Due to contact tracing in our school buildings, there have been 23 situations where we needed to quarantine significant numbers of students and staff. In 21 of those 23 situations, those schools pivoted to remote instruction for 14 days due to quarantine numbers and staffing shortages. We further anticipate more of these events due to holiday contact, college students returning home, and traveling that may occur over the weekend."

It is all putting pressure on the district's already strained staffing levels, he said.

"Each day, we continue to face staffing shortages for the reasons described in our many communications (quarantined staff, leave of absences, long term illnesses). This has resulted in students being supervised by staff other than their regular teacher and a marked increase in students choosing remote instruction," he said. "A number of other local school districts already have chosen to take holiday pauses. This also places strain on our system, since many of our staff have children in those districts."

Rockland County health officials have paired up with Good Samaritan Hospital to offer testing for staff and students this week. Here are the details: Coronavirus: Testing Students In Rockland's Expanded Yellow Zone.