ADAMS — All students, faculty, staff and visitors will be required to wear a mask at all times inside the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter School building.
In addition, according to federal mandate, each student must wear a mask at all times on school buses and in the office of the school nurse, according to a letter to the school community from James C. White II, BART executive director.
Exceptions to mask requirements will be when students are seated to eat lunch, are on school-sanctioned mask-breaks, and when students are participating in outdoor fitness classes.
Preparations for the coming school year have included consideration of guidance issued by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education “of how we will address student and employee health and safety within the continuing COVID-19 pandemic,” White wrote.
“We expect that health and safety requirements for education will be fluid and changing over the course of the 2021-2022 school year,” the letter states. “Last school year, we created the BART Health & Safety Committee (BHSC) to help us evaluate guidance and health-related information and implement measures to keep our students and employees as safe and healthy as we could."
That work will go on, he said. Meantime, families will be asked to complete daily screening forms.
White said the school will make public any confirmed cases of COVID-19 within the school community.