Our Blog

School News

Our Lady of Our Lourdes in Taunton to start school in-person

Originally published on tauntongazette.com
By Susannah Sudborough

TAUNTON — Our Lady of Our Lourdes Elementary School in Taunton is set to start the school year with its students in the building for in-person learning, coinciding with the decision of the Fall River Diocese.

But Superintendent Daniel Roy said that if need be, the school does have plans in place for both hybrid and remote learning.

″[The administration] has worked diligently on three different plans. Our priority is the health and safety of our school community,” he said. “That is something we continue to monitor and we have the flexibility to move to a different mode of learning if circumstances dictate.”

Roy said the Fall River Diocese is doing everything it can to keep students and teachers safe, spending more than $250,000 on personal protective equipment for Catholic schools in the area. He said staff were also trained over the summer on safety procedures and policies to ensure the school follows the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s guidelines.

“Our communities are enhanced by our faith and our values — by our belief that relationships matter, by those connections that our students make with one another and by the particular care and concern and attention our teachers give to our students,” he said. “And those qualities are best realized in an in-person format.”

The school is allowing parents to keep their children home and continue remote learning if they so choose, Roy said. In that case, the students will attend class at home and their classes will be broadcast for them to view on a computer.

But just because the school is going ahead with in-person learning does not mean they will hesitate to go remote, Roy said. The administration is closely monitoring the coronavirus situation in the city.

“We’re really heartened to learn that the city of Taunton’s transmission rate is low right now, …but that doesn’t mean we’re taking our eye off the ball,” he said.

Roy said the school was able to pivot effectively when they shut down and turned to remote learning last spring, and he’s confident that it can do so again if need be.

top of page