Dear Greene Street Friends School Families,

We are writing to inform everyone in our community of the unfortunate news that we have cancelled this year's 7th grade trip to Costa Rica based on the rapidly developing news around the Coronavirus. The essential factor in cancelling this trip was that we do not know how the virus will progress before March 20, 2020, the date the students were to have returned to Philadelphia.

We are concerned that our students will be drawn into a quarantine situation. People can catch Covid-19 almost anyplace, but the risk is that the experience of our students, our host school, and the families of our students and theirs would have been disrupted in a very stressful way by the measures that are being implemented by health authorities in both countries.

We are deeply sad and disappointed for our students, chaperones, and pen pals, all of whom have been eagerly anticipating this experience for a long time. Ultimately, our decision was to err on the side of safety and caution at a moment when news of quarantines and exposure to the virus is changing daily. 

We shared this news with our 7th grade students and families this morning and are currently working on both short term plans for those students for the next two weeks, as well as future possibilities for travel.