Portales Municipal Schools enacting Enhanced COVID Safe Practices, close on Friday, Jan. 21
Dear Parents and Guardians:
According to the Portales Municipal School District's Enhanced COVID Safe Practices Plan (CSP) and the Public Education Department's COVID Toolkit, when a school reaches 3% positive cases within a 14 day period, it is recommended that schools activate its CSP. When a school reaches 5% positive cases it must activate the plan. As of today, three (3) schools within the Portales Municipal School District have reached the 5% positive case rate. The other three schools are closing in on 5%. Therefore, we must activate our CSP. The PMSD plan requires that schools who reach 5% positivity close for one day and receive a deep cleaning. Therefore, all schools will be closed on Friday, January 21 so that custodial and maintenance staff can deep clean each of the schools. School will resume as usual on Monday, January 24. During this closure all athletic and other events are canceled. No City League games or practices will occur on school property until the 24th.
Closing schools is not something we take lightly, but out of an abundance of caution and to be in line with PED and DOH guidelines, the decision to close and clean seems to be the best option at this time.
In order to assist schools to keep case numbers down, please do not send your children to school if they are showing symptoms of COVID-19. If your child is having symptoms, you can call the school and a nurse will meet you at your car and can provide your child with a COVID test. The nurse will call you with the results after 30 minutes. Regardless, if your child is ill, please keep them home, especially if he or she is running a fever. Not only are we seeing cases of COVID, we are also seeing cases of strep and would prefer that not spread.
As always, thank you for your patience and support as we continue to move through these trying times.
Johnnie S. Cain
Superintendent
Portales Municipal Schools
501 S. Abilene
Portales, NM 88130
(575) 356-7000