Dear Families,
Happy New Year, and I hope you have all had a wonderful break with your families. We are looking forward to seeing everyone, but as we shared in our December 29 email to families, we are delaying our return to school to provide an additional buffer after the holidays and to allow the first round of pooled testing to be completed. If we are able to get our pooled testing results back by Tuesday, we will resume classes and activities for toddler-PG on Wednesday, January 5. We will communicate this information as soon as possible, but it will likely be the afternoon of Tuesday, January 4.
Because the toddler and primary students are not able to participate in pooled testing, we are not requiring testing for this age group. However, if you are able, it is still beneficial to test this group. Please remain vigilant by keeping students home if they may be experiencing symptoms.
In addition, we have revised two policies regarding isolation and quarantining. These new policies will reduce quarantine and isolation times for those students who have been fully vaccinated within the last six months or fully vaccinated/boosted. This first chart details a return to school plan for close contacts with family members, eliminating our prior required quarantine for an individual who was a close contact with a family member. The second chart reduces isolation time for an individual who has tested positive to as few as five days. We made these policy changes both in reaction to recent guideline changes by the CDC and research on the peak infectious periods for the current, dominant strains of the virus. Visit our up-to-date COVID-19 FAQ page, and if you have any questions, please feel welcome to reach out to Ashley Moody for clarification on any of these policies.
While protecting the health and safety of our school community and the community around us, it remains our chief goal to keep our students in school and engaged in the activities that are important to them. We believe this is critically important to the health and development of our students, and we are doing our best to make sure any interruptions are short lived. While we cannot control the ultimate trajectory of this pandemic, we have no plans to shift to remote learning for any period of time.
I am looking forward to second semester, with students in class and engaged in activities. Again, I want to express how grateful I am for the efforts, flexibility, cooperation, and patience of each of you in our community. I recognize this has not been easy, and it has truly been a team effort. We are also thinking of everyone who is currently sick and wishing them a quick recovery.
See you all soon.
Sincerely,
Ben Jackson
Head of School
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