Good afternoon,

We were notified this week that a staff member, who had been vaccinated, has tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, the staff member is not experiencing adverse effects from the virus. The staff member was only experiencing minor symptoms but was tested due to a possible exposure to an infected person.

Since we have experienced our first "breakthrough" case and have learned of others in our region, we will be slightly changing our sick leave policy for vaccinated employees. HR will send out more guidance on this soon. We have also requested to host a "booster" clinic for our staff as soon as they are offered. As always, we support our employees in either decision they make about vaccination and have no plans to require vaccination by staff or students.

As we prepare for our first day of school on Thursday, we plan to communicate as much as possible about positive cases in our schools. If the experiences of other school divisions in SWVA are any indication, we should expect as many, if not more, quarantines as we had last year. Wearing masks with fidelity and increasing vaccination uptake will be our best chance to prevent as many quarantines as possible. If you want to stay up to date, you can track positive cases in our schools at https://www.bvps.org/apps/pages/coviddashboard