Editorial: School Supt. urges COVID safety rules

Pete Kudlak, superintendent of the Van Buren Public Schools, urged the Belleville-area community to practice safety procedures to keep the COVID-19 pandemic at bay in this community.
At the Nov. 9 regular meeting of the board of education he said he sees a lot of people hanging out in the park at Five Points and there are no masks. That concerns him.
He said there have been just eight positive COVID-19 tests of staff and students in the Van Buren district and 45 people have been quarantined. He said all the transmissions came from the outside the school and no transmissions were in their district. Most knew exactly where they had the contact, he said.
Supt. Kudlak said there are more likely to be transmissions among those who are coming to school in person. He said a lot of families need to have their kids at school because of baby-sitting issues, emotional needs, and other reasons. That’s why an all-remote-learning district would be hard for families, but that’s where the district would head if the numbers rise.
He called for the community to practice good behaviors outside the school district and to remember the more times you are putting yourself at risk outside the school district the more likely you are to bring it into the school district.
“We’ve got a good thing going and we want to keep it,” Kudlak said, referring to the low incidence of positive tests in the district.