By Elizabeth F. McNamara

As the School Committee meeting was ending Tuesday evening, interim Supt. Frank Pallotta announced he’d just gotten notice from R.I. Dept. of Health: the ailing sibling of the Meadowbrook Farms student tested negative for the coronavirus COVID-19. 

Pallotta had sent notice in the late afternoon that school would resume at Meadowbrook Wednesday but at the start of the School Committee meeting, it was unclear how long it would take before the district learned the test results. 

The declaration of the negative result proved a calming end to a tumultuous day for the school district and families that had started early Tuesday with a phone call from the parents to Principal Neil Marcaccio alerting him that one of their children had come down with fever and coughing overnight. Complicating the picture was that the family had been in Europe in February. 

The child who’d fallen ill was not a student, but a sibling was a student at Meadowbrook. Out of what Pallotta said was “an abundance of caution,” Meadowbrook was closed Tuesday and an outside company was called in to disinfect the school. 

School resumes tomorrow.

Supt. Pallotta addresses the School Committee Tuesday:

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