Dear SMCS Parents,
We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year! Thank you for your continued support as we navigate the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
Nurse Diaz and I have been closely monitoring the COVID-19 in both our school community and in the greater Houston area. Our goal continues to be able to keep students learning in-person on campus in the safest environment possible. We have seen an increase in the number of COVID cases and quarantined students since our mask policy changed on November 1, 2022.
As of the end of December 2021, our SMCS community has already surpassed the number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases in our school community from the entire 2020-2021 school year which was 24 lab-confirmed COVID cases.
Starting on January 4, 2022, we are going to re-instate our mask requirement for all students and staff while indoors on campus. This change in the mask requirement is being made based on the positivity rate of greater than 15% in the city of Houston / Harris County Area. This policy will be reviewed again on Friday, January 14, 2022.
The thresholds that we will use to return to mask recommended / strongly encouraged wearing thresholds are:
- The positivity rate for the City of Houston/Harris County and the Texas Medical Center stays below 10% for 14 consecutive days.
- The Harris County COVID-19 Threat Level stays at orange or below.
- SMCS has fewer than 5 new positive COVID-19 cases and fewer than 10 students or staff in quarantine over a 14 day period.
We also updated our isolation and quarantine policies to match the new recommendations from the CDC. These policies are outlined in our updated COVID protocols document which is available here and on our school website. Please pay close attention to the CDCs updated definition of vaccinated and unvaccinated. The revisions and updates to our policy are in pink.
Although we are returning to requiring masks while indoors, we still have some great things happening in 2022. We will not make any changes at this time to our spectator policy at middle school basketball games. We are still moving forward with our plans to begin field trips again. We are also working on retreats and class trips for our middle school students.
Nurse Diaz and I appreciate everyone's cooperation and support. We could not keep students learning in person without your help.
Have a safe rest of the break. We look forward to seeing students back on campus on Tuesday.
Blessings,
Dr. Cox and Nurse Diaz
