PEABODY — Mayor Ted Bettencourt is urging residents to cooperate with public health officials in the city’s efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19 through contact tracing.
“Rates of COVID infection in our community have continued to increase over the past several weeks,” Bettencourt wrote in a Jan. 14 Facebook post. “Thus far, the aggressive protocols and precautions we have in place within the Peabody Public Schools have enabled us to continue offering a hybrid learning model.
“To continue offering hybrid learning, as well as the many after-school and extracurricular programs that help our students cope during the pandemic, we must isolate positive cases quickly and conduct contact tracing to identify close contacts. Your cooperation with public-health nurses will help keep our students in school learning and help keep our entire community safe,” he said.
The School Committee voted last week to suspend in-person learning at the high school through Jan. 19 due to rising COVID cases and a staff shortage due to quarantine situations. Bettencourt’s plea came one day after a person named Deavin Tosuchs disputed those claims in a message he posted on the “Pride in Peabody” Facebook page. The post was later deleted. Bettencourt did not return calls seeking comment.
“The high school is remote due to a huge New Year’s Eve party that someone in the community had and the fact that parents are refusing to cooperate with the health department in regards to contact tracing,” the post said, adding that School Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala “won’t call out irresponsible community members, but would rather blame it on our hardworking frontline teachers and throw them under the proverbial bus.”
Vadala dismissed those claims, saying, “I cannot comment on Facebook posts that are clearly fake accounts. I can confirm that the decision for the high school to go remote was because of our inability to sufficiently cover the classes due to staff needing to quarantine. It is disappointing that any member of our community would create a fake Facebook profile to spread misinformation and question the transparency and integrity of the school administration and the public health department.
“We are not looking to place blame on anyone,” Vadala said. “When our staff members are sick or need to quarantine, we would require them to stay home until they are able to safely return to work.”
School Committee member Joe Amico said he has heard “similar things about the party and people not cooperating with contact tracing.
“I’ve heard it, but don’t know if any of what people are saying is true,” Amico said. “I do know that if it is true, then people need to stop doing it and start cooperating. We have one of the best health professionals in the state in Sharon Cameron, so people need to know how important it is when they get that call asking for information. People could save lives by being truthful.”
Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunne said she has not been informed of parents who are refusing to cooperate with contact tracers. She said she sympathizes with teachers who feel that they are being blamed for the district’s decision to go remote.
“I have not been told of any specific instances that parents are willfully failing to cooperate, whether it be with a particular party that people are talking about or anything else,” Dunne said. “I only know what Ted put in his Facebook post.
“What I do know is that when other communities found that people were refusing to take part in contact testing, they shut down their schools. Something caused the mayor to make that post, so I don’t know what, but it seems like something may be going on here,” she said.
Dunne said she has heard from many teachers who are frustrated with the current situation and feel that their concerns are not being heard.
“They are seeing this from the ground up and are enforcing the rules while in school, but then the kids are out the door, the masks come off, and they see the kids going to each other’s houses,” Dunne said. “They are afraid that, because people are not following the rules, the increases we are seeing in the general population will eventually lead to increases in schools.”
In his Facebook post, Bettencourt stressed that people need to cooperate fully if contacted by public health officials and that the process is confidential.
“Cooperation with public health officials to prevent the spread of disease is required by state law,” Bettencourt wrote. “But more importantly, I view it as the duty of every one of us to do our part to protect the health and safety of our fellow residents.”
