March 1, 2022
Dear Families,
I hope you are all doing well and ready for March Break.
As many of you know, the CDC recently updated its guidance for masks in indoor settings and has aligned school guidelines with these new community guidelines. NYA is following these guidelines as we assess mask wearing at school. The US CDC classifies and regularly updates each community as high, medium, or low risk. This link provides more information. In high risk communities, the CDC still recommends universal mask wearing. As of this writing, Cumberland County still ranks as a high risk classification, in which the CDC still recommends universal mask wearing in all indoor settings. As such, NYA will continue to require universal masking indoors for the time being.
We look forward to more of a return to normal as soon as possible, including making masks optional in indoor settings. There have been just three additional positive tests in our community in the last two weeks. These trends in the NYA community are currently encouraging and a significant departure from our case levels from December through the beginning of February. That said, we will continue to make decisions based on the best interests and safety of our community. Future decisions will utilize CDC guidance, community level classifications, and spread within our community. In addition, decisions regarding early childhood education will largely be based on guidance from the CDC and Maine DHHS.
There will be no pooled testing this week as it would be difficult to conduct follow up testing with vacation beginning after classes on Friday. We will renew pooled testing when we return from break, including a special Monday testing session. We will also provide additional guidance and an NYA-specific update immediately prior to our return from break.
As always, I encourage you to continue to self-screen, and when exhibiting symptoms, to test. If you are traveling over break, please also be aware of the CDC guidelines for travel, which can be found here.
Thank you for all you continue to do help keep us engaged in the community. I hope these positive trends continue, and we will soon be able to further ease our guidelines, while still acting in the interests of the health and safety of our school and surrounding community.
Have a wonderful break next week!
Sincerely,
Ben Jackson
Head of School
