August 25, 2021
Dear Prince Families,
Similar to last school year, you will continue to receive COVID-19 updates from my office, but they will not be weekly as we continue to operate in this new normal for the third school year (spring of '20, all of '20-21, and now fall of '21). With almost three weeks of school complete, we have initial data on how COVID-19 continues to impact our family-school community.
This week, twelve students tested positive for COVID-19 (in and out of school exposures) and are quarantined at home. Our infection rate is currently four percentage points lower than our neighboring public-school systems, which I attribute to diligent parental monitoring of children's health and keeping students home if they are sick. We continue to promote surface cleaning and student handwashing during the day, and we are disinfecting all classrooms with Bioesque at night (99.9% effective in killing the COVID-19 virus on surfaces). We are also rearranging desks within the lower school to promote more physical distancing.
Medical experts forecast we will continue to experience more positive COVID-19 cases in the coming months, and parents should report positive tests to us via the portal on our website located HERE. As a reminder, parents who request hybrid instruction for their quarantined or sick student should email or call their child's principal (please, not the student's teacher but his or her principal).
Leading and sustaining the day-to-day operations of a PreK-12 school during a pandemic relies heavily on the parent and school partnership documented in our school's mission statement. Thank you for your continued flexibility and support in embracing our forward-leaning approach that provides the academic, spiritual, social, and emotional benefits inherent to in-person instruction. Many of our colleagues returning to traditional instruction for the first time in over a year are working through the lessons we learned last year. Our faculty and staff are united in our desire to continue moving our school forward…always forward.
