Following the NYSDOH and ECDOH announcements, St. Amelia School will be a mask-optional environment beginning Wednesday March 2, 2022.
In making this decision, we consulted with the Diocese of Buffalo as well as teachers, parents, Parish leadership, the SAS School Board, and Home School Association. It is our continued hope that the worst of this pandemic is behind us, but we will continue to rely on our state and local agencies for continued public health guidance and adjust our building policies accordingly.
We want to emphasize that the choice for any individual – student, teacher, parent, coach, or visitor – to wear a mask or not is a personal one. School administration will not tolerate poor behavior between members of our community based on their choice to wear a mask or not. For students, this will fall under bullying in the student code of conduct. Furthermore, the decisions of any of our faculty or staff members to wear a mask or not, are also theirs to make. Administration will not tolerate parents or students who voice their opposition to that decision.
The school will continue its multi-layered approach to mitigate the spread of any illness in the building. We have attached the updated St. Amelia School COVID procedures and guidelines and encourage you to review them. All updates have been made in blue. This document will also be posted on our COVID resource page on the school website.
Please be advised that the lifting of the mask mandate has not changed the guidelines for quarantine at this time. Therefore, there is a stronger likelihood that more students will be identified as close contacts if there are any infected individuals in the building. We want to remind you that if your student is fully vaccinated, they do not need to quarantine if they are identified as a close contact. Also, please continue to monitor your child’s health prior to school and keep them home if they exhibit COVID-like symptoms.
Once our Limited Service Laboratory (LSL) is established we will be able to enact Test to Stay (TTS) within the building for those individuals deemed close contacts. We will continue to notify the community of positive cases via the covid@stameliaschool.org email.
We appreciate your continued patience and cooperation as we work through these changes. Please do not hesitate to contact Mrs. Katie McIntyre at kmcintyre@stameliaschool.org, if you have any questions about the updated policies.
Thank you and God Bless,
Mrs. Katie McIntyre, Principal
Mrs. Janet Larson, Assistant Principal