Welcome back, Rockets! Here is the schedule for orientation days:

  • Class of 2024 tomorrow 7:40-11:45 a.m.
  • Class of 2023 Friday 8:00-9:30 a.m.
  • Class of 2022 Friday 10:00-11:30 a.m.
  • Class of 2021 Friday 12:00-1:30 p.m.

A big priority is to inform students about health measures on and off campus that will help all of us stay well. The measures include a health self-assessment that students and educators will conduct every morning before we arrive on campus through the mobile site Safe Return. During orientation we’ll guide students to add a link to this site to their mobile devices. When students go to their Crew classroom immediately after arriving on class days, the teacher will ask students to show that they have completed the self-assessment and will take their temperatures via a remote thermometer. Anyone with symptoms will see our full-time school nurse, Jeannine Blatt R.N., in her updated suite, which includes separate rooms for people with routine illness and people with possible symptoms of COVID-19.

Please note that dismissal time for class days has been changed from 2:40 to 2:25 p.m. After consulting with Student Council leaders, we decided to shorten lunch time to thirty minutes between classes because the capacity of our Café with six feet between students is a third of its regular capacity. We’ll use four lunch shifts rather than the customary two. Even with this change, about a third of the students will need to have lunch in their classrooms during a half-hour break in class. We’ll rotate the arrangements so that each student will have lunch in the Café two-thirds of days and in a classroom the remaining third. We are collaborating with our foodservice, Derringer, to develop a system for students on the classroom lunch rotation to pre-order a box lunch to be delivered to their classroom. Students on the first classroom lunch rotation will need to bring lunch from home. Mr. Rosenbaum will contact these students by Friday.

You will receive the Student/Parent Handbook via email by Friday. We will ask parents/guardians and students to sign and return by the end of next week a paper form acknowledging that they have read the handbook.

Together we have worked hard so that students can enjoy the McNick experience on campus. Our opportunity to continue on campus depends on all of us heeding both on and off campus what Cincinnati Children’s Hospital calls “The Bundle”: 1. Wear masks, 2. Stay 6 feet apart, 3. Wash hands, 4. Sanitize surfaces. Thanks for doing your part!