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Frontier Central School District goes fully remote due to COVID-19

Posted at 7:47 PM, Nov 10, 2020
and last updated 2020-11-10 20:05:07-05

HAMBURG, N.Y. (WKBW) — Amid growing coronavirus cases and questions about ambiguous in-school testing policies, Frontier Central School District is going fully remote across its schools.

In a letter to families, Superintendent of Schools Richard Hughes says remote learning will begin on Thursday, November 12th.

"This is not where we wanted to be," Hughes said in the statement. "We have done everything we can to keep our doors open to our Falcons but the growing positivity rate makes it impossible to continue to do so at this time."

On Tuesday afternoon, school administrators became aware of "a number of employees" in the transportation department who have to quarantine. This latest development is in addition to a growing number of students and staff who are quarantining.

Hamburg is included in New York's designated Yellow Zone, which requires schools to conduct testing for 20 percent of staff and students for COVID-19. This requirement has caused confusion across school districts, as administrators say they were originally told schools were not responsible for testing.

"This recent change requires us to find out more information as quickly as we can before we are able to give our families an answer to what the Yellow Buffer Zone designation truly means for us."

Frontier High School had already temporarily switched to full remote learning on November 1st.