On July 15th, St. Peter School made public its approved Phased Reopening Health and Safety Plan on our school website. On July 17th the Pennsylvania Department of Education announced tighter restrictions and on August 17th PDE announced that previous mandates from the Secretary of Health about-face coverings were to include all children over the age of 2 at all times. This meant that outside of times students are eating, drinking, or having a 10-minute “mask break” students are to have face coverings on at school all day regardless of whether social distancing was in place or not, and regardless of any kind of shielding in place on desks, including recess. This contradicted what we had been told about masks not being required for elementary students during instruction if students’ desks were properly distanced. We spent a great deal of time and resources preparing classrooms for this social distancing throughout the summer. Needless to say, this was disappointing for all of us. Many have asked if we, as a Catholic school, are required to abide by the state directives and the answer to that question is yes. To that end, we have put together the following updated information for all families. We are fully committed to our school and all those that make up our school family. Your health and safety are of utmost importance to us as is our commitment to provide a solid and rich Catholic education to our students. We know how upsetting all of this can be and we hope that with gentleness, compassion, and faith we can all step forward into the school year with hope. As voices have returned to our school these past few weeks, there is an energy and a hope that has been missing for too long. When the boxes of the 2020-2021 assignment books were opened this week, imagine our surprise to see the cover that read, “In Christ, we can!” We couldn’t say it any better. “We’ve got this St. Peter School … WE CAN!
Click here for St. Peter School Updated Health and Safety Plan