TMS Return to In-Person Learning in March

Marin County Tier Change and Return to Campus Timeline

Return to Campus Announcement

Dear TMS community,

As you may be aware, Marin County will be shifting to the Red Tier—effective Wednesday, February 24th. That means TMS will be starting its phased return to in-person learning. Fair warning: this is a very lengthy email, with many details. There will also be many more details to come. As you can imagine, this is a complex undertaking. Please read through the entirety of this email as a family, and be especially certain to fill out the survey at the end of this message.

Our first in-person week will be the week of March 15th. During that week, we will conduct a one-grade-level per day return to campus. Students will come to campus on their appointed grade-level day to be oriented to on-campus safety procedures, and to attend their regular classes. These “First Days” will each be the length of a regular TMS school day (8:30am-3:35pm), and will follow our normal class schedule. As much as possible, we are aiming to keep our minute-by-minute block class schedule and school calendar the same. As you will see in this email, however, there are some calendar changes we’ll need to make.

Re-Orientation Schedule

Here is the schedule for the Week of March 15th:

Monday, March 15th: 9th Grade First Day on Campus (all other grades remote)

Tuesday, March 16th: 10th Grade First Day on Campus (all other grades remote)

Wednesday, March 17th: Fully Remote Day

Thursday, March 18th: 11th Grade First Day on Campus (all other grades remote)

Friday, March 19th: 12th Grade First Day on Campus (all other grades remote)

Following the initial first week on campus, TMS will shift to a *modified version* of our Tier 4 / Cycle Schedule. You can see our initial return-to-campus schedule here:

This schedule needed to be modified from our original plans because TMS must operate as one large campus cohort, rather than three separate cohorts. The features of this schedule include:

Four full days of in-person instruction for all students during on-campus weeks;
An alternating week on / week off format for virus transmission mitigation;
Wednesdays *always* remote, no matter the week—allowing us to keep the facility prepared and ready for the ongoing demands of this change;
A “Flex Day” on Wednesdays during the alternating remote weeks, so that teachers can assign asynchronous work as needed and be tested for COVID-19 on the TMS campus (we are hoping to offer testing to students on campus as well);
Minute-by-minute recreation of the block class schedule.

Marin County Health and Human Services strongly recommends a phased-in approach like the “virus cycle“ model; we believe that this model will be the best way to start this transition for our community. This cycle model has been used successfully by schools in the United States and abroad to mitigate on-campus viral transmission. The alternating remote week allows nine calendar days for symptom monitoring, quarantining, and COVID-19 testing. We are choosing a cycle approach, rather than a hybrid approach, so that everyone in our small community can be together during on-campus weeks. We are hoping to shift to in-person weeks every week at the beginning of May, but we will need to see how the first phase proceeds and make a determination at that point.

A note about cohorts: You may wonder why we are not able to cohort students, or why we are not choosing a hybrid model. Simply put, our small classes have too many mixed grade level groups to allow for feasible cohorting during the current slate of classes in the spring semester. This is also the reason why a hybrid model would have too many limitations. Splitting our already-small student population into too many groups operating simultaneously on-campus and off-campus would not make some of our signature courses very workable—particularly those classes in the arts that have three to four grade levels represented.

Essentially, TMS will be operating as one large cohort. While that may sound concerning, the reality is that our entire school is still smaller than the size of many of the public school cohort groups. Marin County Office of Education has been amassing significant data suggesting that, while returning students to campus does not come without risk, a structured environment like school can actually help to mitigate virus transmission compared with other settings.

Return to Campus Timeline

Here is how the next few weeks will look according to our initial implementation of the cycle model:

Thursday/Friday March 11th and 12th: Teacher Work Days (No School for Students)
Week of March 15th: Grade-level orientation days on campus (Mon = 9th, Tues = 10th, Wed = All Remote, Thurs = 11th, and Fri = 12th)
Monday, March 22nd: Virtual Conference Day (No School for Students, rescheduled from March 15th)
Tuesday 3/23 through Friday 3/26: Remote Learning
Week of March 29th*: All grades in person on campus M, T, Th, and F;

remote on W

Week of April 5th: Spring Break (No Classes)
Week of April 12th: Remote Week
Week of April 19th: All grades in person on campus M, T, Th, and F; remote on W
Week of April 26th: Remote Week
Week of May 3rd**: All grades in person on campus M, T, Th, and F, remote on W

*Outside the Walls will move to the very last week of the school year (week of June 7th). Details to follow.

**During the first week of May, we will make a determination about continuing with the cycle model, or shift to every week in person.

Return to Campus Survey

Must be completed by Monday, March 1st!

It is critical that all families fill out this survey—*one response per student*, to be completed by Monday, March 1st at 9am. We fully understand that not all students will return to campus, for a variety of reasons. TMS will continue to offer remote learning for all students throughout the spring semester. Please understand that remote learning will change as teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching both to students in their classrooms and those who remain online. We expect most students to return to in-person learning, but every class will likely have some number of students remaining online, whether because of preference or temporary quarantining at various times. We do ask that you make a commitment to the choice you select until at least May 3rd, for our planning (e.g., if your student stays remote, your student will need to stay remote until the week of May 3rd). After May 3rd, we can offer in-person learning to students who initially choose to remain remote.

Click here for the Return-to-Campus Survey

Virtual Town Hall

Finally, on Monday, March 8th at 6pm, I will be hosting a Virtual Town Hall for any other questions or concerns. It will be held in the TMS All School Zoom Room. Anyone in our community is welcome to attend. I’ll do a short presentation about any updates, and leave time for questions. Please again note that we will not have classes on Thursday 3/11 or Friday 3/12, so that faculty and staff can prepare for our return to campus.

Remote Teachers

Please note that some of our teachers will be remaining fully remote as we resume in-person learning, and others may need to have specific days of the week when they are teaching remotely. In cases when teachers are remote, students will have an in-person adult monitor who will supervise students and help the remote teacher conduct class. Though some classes will be supervised by adult monitors, the vast majority of all in-person instructional time will be conducted by TMS classroom teachers.

Transportation & Food Service

During the initial period of our return to campus, TMS cannot provide transportation or food service. We will be providing transportation as soon as possible for families who need it, but we cannot guarantee it at this time. When we are able to provide transportation, we will prioritize San Francisco families. Students should plan to bring all food that they will need to campus with them. Students will not be allowed to share food, and will not be allowed to to leave campus at any point during the school day (including the lunch hour). Limiting these services is necessary in order to simplify our operations and focus on health and safety practices. TMS is looking to offer individually-packaged lunch items that can be purchased by families, but we will not be able to start this until April.

COVID-19 Vaccinations for Educators

You may be curious to know about whether or not TMS employees are vaccinated at this time, as some California counties are currently offering vaccines to educators. One of our top priorities is getting as many of our employees vaccinated as quickly as possible for the health and safety of our entire community. As of this writing, Marin County has *not* moved to the Priority 1B status group, which includes educators under 65 who live or work in the county. Some of our employees have been able to get vaccinated if they live in other counties or meet other eligibility criteria. The vaccine rollout for educators is still very much in process, and we are hoping to have as many of our employees vaccinated ASAP.

As you may be aware, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses for full efficacy, and many recipients feel a range of side effects that may hinder their ability to work. Please be patient with our teachers at this time, as they may need to run classes asynchronously in order to make appointments or recover from either a first or second dose. Teachers will communicate directly with their students about any classes that need to be asynchronous as a result of COVID-19 vaccinations. Thank you for your support in advance.

More information to Come

As we get closer to our return week of March 15th, TMS will continue to send updates with important information about healthy and safety procedures and other school policies. Please keep an eye out for these materials. If you’d like to explore the details of our COVID-19 Prevention and Response Health and Safety Protocols, you can do so here. The California Department of Public Health requires that we post this document to our website. It is formatted to meet the state and county requirements. We will be sending out a more user-friendly presentation of this information next week, so that all health and safety protocols are fresh in our minds as we return to campus.

Questions & Concerns

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I am outlining the appropriate points of contact for a few different categories of questions you may have here:

Transportation

Carolyn Sasser (csasser@themarinschool.org)

Food Service

Jenny Lassalle (jlassalle@themarinschool.org)

Student Absences / Weekly Schedule

Leslie Birnbaum (mainoffice@themarinschool.org)

Facilities or Tech

Josh Cardenas (jcardenas@themarinschool.org)

Anything else

Ben Griggs (bgriggs@themarinschool.org) and Leslie Birnbaum (mainoffice@themarinschool.org)

Thank you for reading to the end of this very long letter. I know that taking steps to return to in-person instruction may be accompanied by myriad different feelings and questions for parents/guardians and students. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if TMS can help as we navigate this transition. This is a complex undertaking for our small school. We are excited to see our students again, and look forward to a continued shift back to something that looks more like “normal TMS”!

We’re in this together,

Ben

PS—in case you missed it in this long email, the link to the Return to Campus Planning Survey is here.