The Port Washington school district is close to closing Schreiber High School and Carrie Palmer Weber Middle School due to teacher absences, according to Superintendent Michael Hynes.
At the district’s Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Hynes said that 58 faculty and staff members across the district were quarantining, but did not say how many of them had tested positive for COVID-19.
The New York State School COVID report card showed that as of Tuesday, 56 students and 15 faculty and staff members in the district had tested positive. Schreiber High was listed as having 30 students and four staff members testing positive, and Weber was listed as having 12 students and four staff members testing positive.
“What happens is it’s becoming increasingly difficult to cover certain classes or to cover classes in general,” Hynes said. “And we’re really finding out we don’t have the bodies to cover those classes. And I’m looking at total teacher absences and the quarantined staff members. But if we’re talking total teacher absences, I’m going to go back to Monday.”
On Monday alone, he said, 15 teachers at Schreiber were absent, as were 14 teachers at Weber, three apiece at Guggenheim Elementary and Sousa Elementary, and two apiece at Manorhaven Elementary, Daly Elementary and Salem Elementary.
“Now it’s increasingly getting harder and harder,” Hynes said. “And I’m going to tell you right now, especially at Weber and Schreiber, I am really concerned about those two particular schools.”
“Weber and Schreiber, we are this close” – Hynes held two fingers less than an inch apart up to his web camera – “to potentially closing until the end of next week, into the new year.”
“I just want to clarify, if we have to go remote for Weber and Schreiber, it’s not because our students or staff are testing positive, I just want to be clear that in our buildings, the protocols that we put in place are working,” Trustee Emily Beys said. “I don’t want anybody to hear our discussion and think that we are we have issues in our schools, I wanted to make that clear, that [we have] issues of staffing.”
“The fact of the matter is, you know, us not having enough people to cover has nothing to do with the protocols and procedures we have in place. It’s just that we don’t have the bodies to cover for them,” Hynes said.
The superintendent said that the issue of closing was “weighing on all of us.”
“We’re trying to keep it open, but I’m very worried about trying to stay open,” Hynes said. “Because here’s what we don’t want: Tomorrow morning, or let’s say Thursday morning, we have students who arrive at school, and we don’t have enough staff members to supervise. That’s something we don’t want. So this is something that we’re thinking about often, and we may have to shut down. And we’ll see we’ll take it one day at a time, one hour at a time to be honest with you.”
