New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
After a little more than a week since it was announced that a teacher at the Gomes Elementary School tested positive for COVID-19, New Bedford’s School Superintendent-Director James L. O’Brien sent an email out to parents across the city addressing the positive test result of a student at Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech.
This comes a few days after the school reported that a faculty member also tested positive.
The student was in a group of six students and two teachers or a “pod” where one of those teachers was the recently reported positive case. The superintendent encouraged the other parents of the rest of the students in the pod to be tested. The two teachers and six students will be required to quarantine for 14 days before being allowed to return to the Voc-Tech campus.
O’Brien tried to alleviate the concerns of parents by stating that the student who tested positive had not been circulating with the rest of the school’s students and did not take a bus to school where the virus may have been transferred.
“Parents of Greater New Bedford Voc-Tech Students,
Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School was informed that a student tested positive for COVID-19 this morning. This student was in a vocational-technical pod along with five other students and two teachers.
All of these individuals have been dismissed from the campus and will be required to quarantine for 14 days. Our two faculty members will undergo testing for COVID-19 and we are encouraging the parents of these five additional students to have them tested as well.
This student was not in contact with the general school population, was not on a school bus or in contact with the faculty member that tested positive on September 17.
The career/technical area, as always, will be thoroughly disinfected by our facility maintenance/custodial staff. Protocols from the Centers for Disease Control, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the MA Department of Health, and the local Board of Health are guiding our response to this situation, and we will continue to rely on that guidance.
As a reminder, it is vitally important for the well-being of everyone, if your child is not feeling well or is displaying any symptoms of COVID-19 we ask you to please keep your child home.
Sincerely,
James L. O’Brien
Superintendent-Director.”
