Dear Beaver Families,
After a great deal of consideration, we have decided to require the vaccine for students as the FDA removes its emergency status for specific age groups. What that means at present is that we will require students 16 and older to become fully vaccinated before they return from Thanksgiving vacation. (For students who will be turning 16, the requirement will be to have the vaccine completed and uploaded to Magnus within 8 weeks of their birthday.)
Some of the factors we considered when making this policy change include:
- Scientific data collected thus far demonstrates that communities with higher vaccination rates have fewer and milder cases of Covid-19, including the Delta and other variants. As of today, we have a 92% vaccination rate among our entire student and adult BVR community. This number includes our youngest population who is not yet eligible to be vaccinated (though we are keeping our fingers crossed for October). We want this number to continue to trend upwards, and we know being vaccinated is a way to keep everyone as safe as possible, something we’ve prioritized since the onset of the pandemic.
- Although Covid-19 will likely be with us for years to come, communities have the strongest likelihood of minimizing the spread by requiring the vaccine, as they have for other diseases that are now only rarely detected.
- As a school dedicated to local partnerships and real-world experiences, we hope to resume getting students out into the community as much as possible. There are many organizations with whom we have excellent relationships that require all participants to be vaccinated. We don’t want our students to miss out on educational opportunities we consider important because they are not vaccinated. And, we want to be respectful of partnerships that are such a big part of the Beaver education.
- Although it is not yet a position taken by the EIL, there are schools in other leagues with whom we traditionally compete who will only schedule games with schools that require the vaccine.
Parents/caregivers can apply for religious and medical exemptions; conversations about religious exemptions and any necessary forms will be handled through the offices of the Middle and Upper School Division Directors, and conversations about medical exemptions will be handled directly through the school nurse, Talia Ossowski.
Please know that we make no Covid-19 related decisions lightly. We take into account national and local data and information from our panel of experts, the CDC, and DESE. We consider many perspectives and come to the conclusion we think is best for our entire school community.
Thank you for your partnership in these times that continue to challenge all of us.
Kim Samson
Head of School
