The following is a letter sent to parents from Fairhaven Public Schools Superintendent Tara M. Kohler
Dear FPS Families,
Fairhaven Public School District’s top priority is and always will be the safety of our school community. While the health of our town, state, country and world has been in limbo for the past two years dealing with COVID-19 — the goal of Fairhaven Public Schools has remained the same — to keep students in school for as long as possible.
That said, in partnership with the Bristol County Sheriff’s K9 Unit and Florida International University, FPS has recently become the second school district in the country to utilize Law Enforcement K9 COVID-19 sniffing dogs as an additional mitigation measure to help stop the spread and keep students in school.
The dogs, who are trained to distinguish the unique odor of COVID-19, have a 97% accuracy rate when it comes to indicating the scent on a surface. Not only are these dogs capable of mitigating COVID-19 proactively, they are also friendly dogs who enjoy being around people.
We believe that utilizing this scientific strategy will be the difference between sending a whole class home and just a couple of students in the case of a possible exposure in a classroom. We hope that this will help us proactively notify families to monitor for symptoms instead of constantly quarantining students after the fact.
The program was developed at Florida International University by a team of professors, doctors, and scientists who already specialized in K9 detection of viruses. The shift to scientifically identify COVID-19 is the first of its kind in the country.
First piloted by the Freetown-Lakeville School District in September, FPS became aware of this program in November 2021 and officially signed on in December 2021, after the Fairhaven school committee unanimously supported the project.
While we weren’t expecting things to move as quickly as they did, by January, the Bristol County Sheriff K9 Unit called looking for a new building to allow the dogs to complete their formal training certification. Their certification process was completed by Dr. DeEtta Mills and Kip Schultz of Florida International University.
The timing of their request came along with the news of a regional spike in positive cases. As such, we thought it would be a great opportunity to have the dogs train in our schools. As you know, the dogs searched East Fairhaven Elementary School that week and formally received their training certification. Quickly, the media jumped onto the story, choosing to highlight the project on FUN 107, WBZ News, and WBSM.
We appreciate your support and truly believe this initiative is a forward-thinking approach to help stop the spread of COVID-19 in our schools. We look forward to our continued work with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office to conduct weekly checks in our schools.
To capture the idea behind the COVID-19 sniffing dogs and the amazing program, please watch this video summary of the project: https://youtu.be/DlFhNWX5Jv8
Feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions. Also, the Bristol County Sheriff’s K9 Unit has offered to make themselves available to anyone who has questions.
Thank you,
Tara M. Kohler, Superintendent
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Click here to download the entire 1/20/22 issue: 01-20-22 FrozenMarsh
Click here to download the 4/28/21 Comment letter, 04-28-21 Comment Letter BOEM and here to download the 8/13/21 Response: 08-13-21 NBPA BOEM ResponseLtr
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