On-Campus Learning & Safety

Pre-screening for COVID-19 risk factors beyond fever will require significant parent and family accountability. Participation in our new Safety App by AUXS is required for all families.

Each morning, prior to arriving on campus or entering the carpool line, parents must complete a daily COVID-19 health pre-screening form for their child(ren) using the Safety App by AUXS. The form consists of a list of COVID-19 symptoms and a field to report your child’s current temperature. (This information is being monitored daily by our Nurse’s office.) Once the form is submitted, the parent will immediately receive a notification either allowing them to proceed to campus or requiring the student to stay home. Should the child be required to stay home, one of our nurses will follow-up with the parent after 8:30 AM to determine the next step.

Families failing to complete this pre-screening will receive an email reminder to complete this form as soon as possible. Repeated failures to complete this form may lead to a student being ineligible for on-campus instruction.

Any absence from school associated with illness and/or symptoms of COVID-19 must be reported on the Safety App by AUXS. This will allow our Response Team to follow-up with parents.

How Do I Get Set-up with the Safety App by AUXS?

1. Before on-campus learning begins, parents will receive an email on Thursday, August 20 from Safety App by AUXS with a parent username and password.
2. Please follow the instructions in the Safety App by AUXS email and set-up your account.
3. Refer to this Quick Reference Guide for assistance and practice using Safety App by AUXS before the first day on-campus.

All students coming on campus must have a temperature below 100.0°F without the use of fever-reducing medication.

AOS staff/faculty will use contact-less infrared forehead thermometers to take the temperature of each student every morning. For those students arriving via the carpool line, students must exit the car and wait on the curb for a faculty or staff member to take their temperature. (Parents should not pull away from the carpool line until the temperature of all children in the car has been taken.)

Once all students have passed the temperature screening, they will then be allowed to enter the building.

If any child in the car exhibits a temperature of 100.0°F or higher, then all the children from that car will not be allowed to come to school that day. See the COVID-19 Symptoms on Campus section for what happens when a child exhibits COVID-like symptoms.

For students walking from the lower school parking lot, a faculty or staff member will take their temperature prior to entering the building.

We will require frequent hand washing. Teachers will give lessons on how to properly wash hands.

We have installed sanitizing stations around campus and will require their use throughout the school day.

We will immediately call a child’s parents and expect them to immediately pick up their child. Siblings of symptomatic children will also be sent home, even if the sibling is asymptomatic. Asymptomatic siblings may return to campus as soon as the following day, but only if their symptomatic sibling has received a release back to school from their doctor based on a negative PCR test or an alternative diagnosis as detailed below.

Per CDC recommendations, any person exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms will be assumed to have COVID-19 unless a a release to return to school from their doctor based on a negative PCR test or an alternative diagnosis deems otherwise. People exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms will be required to present one of the two aforementioned clearances in order to return to campus. Under no circumstances will any person be allowed to return to campus with a fever. As per our normal policy, at least 24 hours must have passed since a fever resolved without fever-reducing medication before returning to campus.

Any absence from school associated with illness and/or symptoms of COVID-19 must be reported on the Safety App by AUXS. This will allow our Response Team to follow-up with parents.

COVID-19 symptoms currently included the following:

• Fever or chills
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Fatigue
• Muscle or body aches
• Headache
• New loss of taste or smell
• Sore throat
• Congestion or runny nose
• Nausea or vomiting
• Diarrhea

We will require a negative PCR test result before returning to campus for any person who is symptomatic, has not taken a COVID-19 test, and cannot provide a release to return to school from a medical professional based on an alternative diagnosis. Additionally, we require that anyone who is symptomatic and tests positive for COVID-19 follow the following CDC guidelines in order to return to campus.

Those guidelines are as follows:

• At least 10 days since symptoms first appeared,
• At least 24 hours with no fever without fever-reducing medication, and
• Symptoms have improved
   

The cohort model and schoolwide social distancing practices will allow our students to miss far less in-person class time if/when we have a positive case in our community, as everyone who was not directly exposed will be able to return to campus.

AOS created a COVID-19 Response Team this year to quickly engage the situation from all angles if a COVID-19 case is suspected or confirmed in our community. This team is led by Emily Benton and includes members of the Administration Team and our school nurses. Emily spent this summer training in contract tracing and studying every appropriate agency’s guidelines to prepare for this role. Any time a case is suspected or confirmed, this team will assemble in order to effectively determine the proper contract tracing, facility sanitization, cohort closure, and community communication that needs to occur

All children and adults who have been in close contact with an individual who tests positive will be asked to quarantine at home for 14 days.

Close contact is currently defined as the following:

• Having any physical contact
• Staying within 6 feet of someone for 15 minutes or more, regardless of mask usage
• Sharing an environment (office, classroom) for a prolonged (>60 min) period of time, regardless of mask usage
• Sharing food

If a student tests positive, all students in that cohort must quarantine due to their close contact with that individual. Additionally, any teacher who spent greater than a single class period would need to quarantine as well. This would usually apply to homeroom/advisor teachers, but not to departmentalized teachers who were in the room for a single period.

If a teacher tests positive, the students in that teacher’s homeroom/advisory will be asked to quarantine, but students in other cohorts that the teacher has interaction with may not be asked to quarantine depending on the circumstances of contact with those cohorts.

We will closely examine the details surrounding every suspected and confirmed case and reserve the right to ask any student or staff/faculty member to quarantine regardless of whether they fit the definition of close contact outlined here. The details of every case can be complicated and many factors must be considered. (I.e. was the person who tested positive symptomatic? Did that person follow all safety protocols?) We will always use our best judgement to keep our community as safe as possible.

We will inform the whole community when a positive case emerges, and we will tell those families whose child had close contact with that person that their child was exposed. The identity of the person who has tested positive will be kept confidential. The Health Department will inform AOS of any positive cases in our community. Community members also have the option to self-identify. Any individual who had close contact with the person who tested positive must quarantine for 2 weeks prior to returning to campus.

If your child has been in contact with a positive case of COVID-19 at AOS that we are made aware of by a parent or by the Health Department, our contact tracer will reach out to that family to provide instructions on quarantine or isolation. These will be determined on a case-by-case basis by the contact tracer’s regulations on what is considered a “contact” (Johns Hopkins University Contact Tracing Course Recommendations) and the length of quarantine or isolation for the child who was in contact with the positive case. It is likely that you will also be contacted by the Houston Department of Health’s contact tracers.

• A full-time day porter will sanitize commonly-touched areas throughout the campus, multiple times per day.
• All classrooms will be adequately equipped with disinfectant wipes for teachers to use throughout the day to spot clean surfaces as needed.
• Hospital-grade cleansers will be used every night in all classrooms, restrooms, offices, and other common spaces.
• Disinfecting foggers will be used to spot treat areas where suspected illness has occurred.

Faculty will enforce social distancing practices in hallways, and signs are posted throughout the building detailing social distancing expectations. For more information on how we are limiting the use of hallways, see "Morning Carpool" in the Carpool section and “Cohort Model” in The School day section.

We have created an additional room in our nurse’s clinic to allow for two separate areas. In one room, nurses will tend to minor cuts and bruises, etc. The other room will serve as a quarantine room for any student exhibiting potential COVID-19 symptoms.

Routine standard cleaning will be conducted after a student is seen in the clinic. We will disinfect the nurse’s clinic immediately if a student with potential COVID-19 symptoms visits the clinic.

Campus visitors, including parents, will not be allowed on campus for the foreseeable future. Only AOS employees, students, and essential services (i.e. certified academic language therapists, repair workers) will be allowed onto the AOS campus. Speech and language pathologists will not be permitted on campus to provide speech articulation services to students.

Our temporary visitor policy will come as a disappointment to many. It is equally disappointing for us, as parent involvement is such a huge part of the energy of AOS. However, it is a necessary sacrifice to ensure the safety of our students, faculty, and staff. We will revise this policy as soon as it is safe to do so.

Water fountains will be turned off, but bottle filling stations will remain on. Bottle filling stations have been added in the Glassell Main Building.

We are lucky to have modern buildings with well-maintained HVAC units. We worked with an HVAC consultant to ensure our system is optimized for maximum airflow. In addition to upgrading the type of air filter we use for all of our buildings, we made a significant investment in technology to help reduce the likelihood of certain pathogens, like viruses, spreading on our campus.

We installed an air purification system in our HVAC system that is designed to reduce the amount of pathogens (including COVID-19) in the air. The system is a Global Plasma Solutions Needlepoint Bipolar Ionization system. It produces an electronic plasma field in the air ducts of the HVAC system, which ionizes the air particles. This breaks down pathogens and aggregates tiny particles in the air so that they will be trapped by our filtering system. This system has been installed in all buildings on campus. Not only will it help reduce the COVID-19 virus in the air, but it will also help reduce cold and flu pathogens. For those students, faculty, and staff with allergies, the system will also clean the air of allergens, odors, and VOCs in the air. This system will provide a healthier air supply for everyone in all buildings on campus.

All classroom doors throughout the building will be propped open throughout the day to increase air circulation throughout the building.

Middle school students will not utilize lockers and will instead store their school supplies in their backpacks. Students will keep their backpacks with them in their classroom. Teachers will actively seek to reduce the amount of materials that need to come home with students each day, and students should only bring to school what is absolutely necessary. We encourage families to purchase small backpacks (instead of the larger, rolling backpacks) to help reduce classroom clutter. For more information on changes to our classroom and instructional models, see “The School Day” section.

We will use the cubbies in Jones Center classrooms to store student blankets, extra uniforms, and student backpacks. The cubbies in Kindergarten closets will store extra uniforms. (Teachers will manage against students clustering/congregating around these areas.) The closet spaces in the lower school classrooms will be used/accessed only by teachers. Backpacks for Kindergarten-4th-grade students will be placed on the back of student chairs, and each student will also have a supply basket beside his/her desk to hold extra supplies.

Afternoon carpool routes will be the same as morning carpool routes. Dismissal times will remain the same as previous years for all divisions with new safety measures to keep students and adults socially distanced and safe.

• Dismissal Times:
  • Jones Center & Kindergarten ONLY students - 2:45 PM
  • 1st - 3rd grade students - 3:00 PM
  • 4th-grade students - 3:15 PM
  • Middle school/Combo students - 3:30 PM

As with morning carpool, parents of students who need assistance getting into their cars/car seats will need to walk up to the lower school or middle school to pick up their child(ren) following the same walk-up procedures as morning carpool.

Lower school students will be socially distanced by their cohorts on the pavilion until their parent enters the carpool line.

Middle school students will remain in their classrooms until their parent enters the carpool line.

Any student arriving late must enter the appropriate lobby with a parent where the student will have his/her temperature checked by the receptionist before walking to the student’s classroom. (Parents will not be allowed past reception.)

Any parent wishing to pick a child up early may enter the appropriate lobby and inform the receptionist of the early pickup. The child will be called down while the parent waits in the lobby.

Please ensure that any family member, nanny, etc. who may be driving students to/from school is familiar with the morning and afternoon routes.

Have your young children practice buckling and unbuckling their car seats themselves prior to the start of school. If your child can do this on their own, then parking and walking them up to school will not be necessary.

Older siblings of our youngest students can help buckle and unbuckle car seats which will also make parking and walking in students unnecessary.

We have redesigned our classrooms to allow for social distance between students. To do this, we increased the number of sections in every grade level and transformed multiple common spaces into classrooms to accommodate the additional sections.

In lower school we have redesigned our classrooms to allow for social distancing of 6 feet between students, and all students will be facing the front of the classroom. Cohorts range from 8-14 students according to how many students can be properly distanced in each space.

In Jones Center and Kindergarten, each class was split into 2 cohorts, making 10 cohorts in Jones Center and 6 in Kindergarten.

1st-4th grades have 5 cohorts at each grade level. Cohorts will stay together throughout the day. Teachers will teach from a designated, socially distanced area at the front of the classroom. Teachers will also have a plexiglass partition at their work stations and the option to wear a face shield in addition to a cloth mask. Teachers and students will wear masks at all times.

In the middle school, students will maintain 6ft of distance in each classroom and all desks will face the front of the classroom. Cohorts range from 10-14 students and will stay together throughout the day. The teachers will travel to each cohort and have a designated teaching space at the front of the room. Teachers and students will wear masks at all times. Teachers will also have face shields and a plexiglass partition at their work station.

All students throughout the school will also have plexiglass dividers on their desks as an added precaution.

We will implement a cohort model: Every student will stay with a single cohort of students throughout the day and will largely stay in the same classroom with those students. For our younger students, this change means classes like music and art will occur in the classroom and they will not see friends from other classes during times like lunch and recess. For our older students, they will stay in one classroom for all of their courses instead of moving from room to room and will not “mix” with other students from their grade during times like lunch and P.E. This model exposes students to the germs of far fewer people.

Jones Center: Each day starts with a morning meeting which includes a focus on calendar work. Students engage in center activities to promote independence as they learn through play. (All shared materials will be properly sanitized before a new student uses them.) Students also experience lessons delivering pre-literacy and pre-numeracy skills, Greek, music, and religion. Enrichment teachers will deliver lessons in the cohort classroom. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is taught weekly and reinforced daily. Time is available each day for recess, the development of gross motor skills (PE), and for a rest time.

Kindergarten and 1st grade: Each day starts with a morning meeting. Students receive daily lessons and activities in literacy and numeracy. Students will attend classes in Greek, religion, music, art, and technology with enrichment teachers who will come to the cohort classroom. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is taught weekly and reinforced daily. Students engage in PE daily and have time for recess and breaks.

2nd grade: The day starts with a morning meeting. Students receive daily lessons in mathematics, reading, writing, and social studies. Students will attend classes in Greek, religion, music, art, and technology with enrichment teachers who will come to the cohort classroom. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is taught weekly and reinforced daily. Students engage in PE daily and have time for recess and breaks.

3rd and 4th grade: The five teachers in each grade will cycle through every cohort every day to deliver classes in mathematics, reading, writing, social studies, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). Each class will be 45-60 minutes. We are excited to introduce this new STEAM class as part of our daily rotation. Students will attend classes in Greek, religion, music, art, and technology with enrichment teachers who will come to the cohort classroom. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is taught weekly and reinforced daily. Students engage in PE daily and have time for recess and breaks.

Middle school: The daily schedule for on-campus learning allows students to see all their core and enrichment teachers each day. Students in 5th-7th grade will have their five core classes - English Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science, and Spanish (6-8th) or composition (5th), and they will have two enrichment classes daily. In 8th grade, students will have the same core classes, one enrichment class, and a high school advising period. Each class will be 40 minutes long, and only the teachers will move from class to class. Each day from 9:30-10:00 AM there is a community time block that will include advisory, Second Step, religion, chapel, and Agape. Lunch is also a 40-minute period so that eating and time outside can be accommodated.

Movement and sunshine are very necessary for all of us, especially as we transition to a less-active school day. All students will get outside every day (weather permitting) to participate in recess. Students will keep their masks on and will maintain social distance, but will be able to socialize with other students in their cohort.

To achieve this with all of our students, we will utilize many new outdoor spaces for middle school students, including outdoor space at the Cathedral and even chaperoned walks at the University of St. Thomas.

Lower school students will utilize playground equipment, which will be disinfected with a Hypochlorous Acid in Electrolyzed Water solution between each cohort.

Each lower school and middle school cohort will attend PE daily while on campus. During PE, students will remain with their cohort, wear masks, and maintain social distance. Middle school: See the Uniforms section regarding PE uniforms.

Lap Day: Our students will still get to experience lap day this year, though it will look a bit different. For each grade, the cohorts will rotate through PE spaces each week and each cohort will have lap day on the day their cohort is on the track. This means that students will have lap day every 5-7 days, depending on the number of cohorts in their grade.

Through Wednesday, September 16, SAGE will provide a variety of predetermined options to each classroom. These predetermined options include a hot entree, a vegetarian entree, and a sandwich boxed lunch. These options will be listed on the daily menu. During this time period, we will also provide enough sandwiches so that every student who wants one can have one.

Beginning Monday, September 14, teachers will collect students’ individual orders three days in advance based on the following schedule: 

• Monday - Order for the following Thursday
• Tuesday - Order for the following Friday
• Wednesday - Order for the following Monday
• Thursday - Order for the following Tuesday
• Friday - Order for the following Wednesday

The first delivery day is Thursday, September 17. The daily options are:

• Hot entree
• Vegetarian hot entree
• Salad entree
• Ham, turkey, or soy butter and jelly sandwich with chips and fruit or salad
• Side salad

Once ordering begins:

• Jones Center students will be encouraged to eat the main entree but will also have sandwich options available.
• For 1st-8th grade, SAGE will only deliver food that is ordered. Additional salads and/or sandwiches will not be automatically available (this is to help cut down on waste). Students who would like additional servings are welcome to order more than one entree or side. Each day’s options can be found on the daily menu.

As always, students are welcome to bring their own lunch to school. We encourage all students to bring a personal, labeled water bottle with them each day. Water fountains will be turned off and self-filling bottle stations will be available.

SAGE will continue to monitor and plan for student food allergies. Cohort teachers will also monitor this in the classroom to ensure all of our students remain safe and students with food allergies are not exposed to foods they are allergic to.

Snacks:

• Jones Center students will be provided a snack every day.
• Lower school and middle school students may bring their own snack, which they will eat during a designated snack time during the school day.
• Middle school will not operate the snack cart this year.

AOS is suspending breakfast service until further notice.

All students will continue to attend chapel. For lower and middle school chapel, the Cathedral will livestream the service to all classrooms while one cohort from middle school and one from lower school will attend each week in person. These two cohorts will maintain social distance within their cohort and will be in separate parts of the Cathedral from each other.

Jones Center chapel will take place in one cohort classroom and be live streamed to all other classes and to students and families at home. Mrs. Koinis will lead the chapel service each week from a different cohort class.

Starting in January 2021, Jones Center chapel services will be streamed from the St. George Chapel, with one cohort group in attendance and the other groups watching from their classrooms. Students and families at home will be able attend by watching a live steam. All services will be recorded.

Students will not share any materials (calculators, markers, pencils, devices, etc.) in the classroom. The school has ordered additional materials not in student supply packs to ensure that nothing is shared.

To avoid device sharing, we purchased additional devices so that every student will have an individual device assigned to them.

Delphi-Kindergarten students will use individual iPads in the classroom. These iPads will go home with students in the event we are required to transition to distance learning, but will remain at school otherwise.

1st-8th-grade students will use individual Chromebooks. If we are on campus, 1st-4th-grade students will leave their Chromebooks at school everyday, and 5th-8th-grade students will bring their Chromebooks to and from school every day. If we are required to transition to distance learning, Chromebooks will be sent home for all students in 1st-8th grades.

AOS invested in Swivl technology in all of its classrooms to improve the experience for Dolphins at a Distance and Hearts & Minds at Home. This is discussed in more detail in the Hearts & Minds at Home section.

Due to the operational changes necessary to support our new cohort model, we are temporarily discontinuing professional learning sessions for our faculty on Tuesday mornings. Therefore, we will not operate a late-start Tuesday schedule, and all school days will begin at the same time (8:00 AM).

The first half-day of school for Jones Center and Kindergarten students will be Tuesday, August 25, with the first full-day being Wednesday, August 26.

1st - 8th-grade students will begin instruction virtually on Wednesday, August 19 and will transition back to on campus learning on the following days:

• Tuesday, September 8 - 1st and 2nd-grade students
• Wednesday, September 9 - 3rd and 4th-grade students
• Thursday, September 10 - 5th and 6th-grade students
• Friday, September 11 - 7th and 8th-grade students

We have a new major dates and holidays school calendar for your reference. All major breaks have remained the same.

AOS already has more instructional days than many Texas private schools, and we do not believe that adding additional days is necessary to fill any gaps that may have been caused by last year's distance learning. If COVID-19, a hurricane, or any other event prevents us from being in school for an extended period of time this year, we will evaluate our options at that time and adapt if necessary.

Because of the size of our locker rooms, students will not be permitted to use them for changing for the foreseeable future. We will temporarily encourage all middle school students to wear their official PE uniforms all day, as it may be uncomfortable to participate in PE outside in a regular uniform. Students may also choose to wear uniform shorts or a skirt over their PE shorts. This new policy is true on all days, including chapel days in the Cathedral. This temporary change does not reflect our overall beliefs about student uniforms, but it is a necessary sacrifice to ensure our middle school students are comfortable during the day. We will provide a 4-week notice if/when we move away from this policy to allow for ample time to purchase school uniforms.

Jones Center and lower school uniforms will remain the same, according to our 2020-2021 uniform program.

If your child chooses to wear a sweatshirt in the building, only AOS uniform-approved outerwear purchased through Dennis may be worn.

Anticipating that AOS will use a combination of on-campus instruction and distance learning for the 2020-2021 school year, assessments may look different than when in a typical school year. During Dolphins at a Distance, teachers will place emphasis on administering formative - rather than summative - assessments that gauge what a student understands and evidence of knowledge. Understanding of concepts may be demonstrated through performance tasks designed to engage students versus a quiz or test. Feedback is key for improvement and given in narratives to explain what a grade measures. For example, the Summer Math Skills Sharpener workbook that we sent home last spring is a formative assessment. When students return the workbooks to their math teacher, the teacher will review what was completed and have a better idea of a student’s strengths and weaknesses. This information will assist the teacher in planning instruction for students. Please be sure your child returns their math workbook upon return to campus.

To measure student growth, we will administer content specific assessments such as the DRA 3 (Developmental Reading Assessment, 3rd edition) in Kindergarten through 4th grade a couple of weeks after students return to campus. We updated to the online version so students can be assessed even if utilizing Hearts & Minds at Home. This assessment is administered two to three times per year as needed. In cumulative content areas where knowledge is sequential and builds from one year to the next such as Spanish and math, teachers will also utilize self-created assessments or curriculum-based assessments to gain additional knowledge about their students.

AOS plans to administer the new Milestones assessment from ERB in 3rd through 8th grade in late September. This assessment consists of forty-minute tests in both reading and math. AOS students will also take the ERB CTP online assessment in the spring. Test results for the Milestones assessment are relayed using the same familiar score interpretation found on the ERB CTP.

All of these assessments aid us in understanding our students’ current knowledge and skills - as well as any potential learning loss that occurred as a result of distance learning in the spring or summer vacation. We are confident that these assessments will provide us with the knowledge we need to effectively plan additional review on missed concepts and aid our students in their continued academic growth.

Our virtual program opportunities include: Middle School Chorus for 5th-8th, AV Club for 5th-8th, Quiz Bowl for 5th-8th, Virtual Piano Lessons for K-8th, and Virtual Voice Lessons for 2nd-8th. Information about registration for our virtual programs will be sent to families on Monday, August 17, and registration will be available through our Extended Day Registration Website. All virtual programs will begin after the Labor Day holiday.

We will offer EDC, our before and after-school childcare program, but we encourage families to utilize these services only if truly needed. EDC will operate under all of the same safety protocols as the school day, and the structure of the program will be determined by the number of students enrolled. It is likely that students from multiple cohorts will be grouped together during EDC, but will continue to wear masks and remain socially distanced during this period of time.

United Church Athletic League (UCAL) will delay the start of the fall soccer season until at least October 1. UCAL, like all group-related activities, is in a very fluid state; please stay tuned for more information as it becomes available. If you have any questions, please email the UCAL Administrator at administrator@ucalsports.org and/or visit the UCAL website at ucalsports.org. AOS will work closely with UCAL to ensure we make a decision that supports our efforts to keep our community members as safe as possible before beginning our UCAL sports.

We will continue to evaluate our options regarding our overnight trips. Each trip brings its own set of challenges with regard to student and chaperone safety. Traveling by air or bus can be unsafe right now, as can sharing hotel rooms or attending heavily-trafficked tourist venues. Trips will be modified to a different location, postponed until later in the year, or cancelled altogether. We recognize the importance of our trips for team-building and bonding and will seek creative alternatives to fill these needs if we are forced to cancel. See below for specifics about each grade level.

• 3rd grade: The Houston Zoo is currently not accepting any group bookings. We will continue to review this option while looking for possible alternatives.
• 4th grade: Our McKinney Roughs trip has been rescheduled for April 8-9 in the hope that we can still attend. We will continue to reassess the challenges of this trip and send updates later in the school year.
• 5th grade: We hope to reschedule The Texas Tour for late spring 2021.
• 6th grade: Mo Ranch was not able to offer us alternative spring dates that would work, so we will seek out alternative venues for a potential 6th-grade trip in late spring 2021.
• 7th grade: Traveling to Williamsburg involves air travel, which is unlikely to be safe enough for a large group of students anytime soon. Our trip to Williamsburg is therefore cancelled, but we are exploring alternatives for a late-spring 7th-grade trip.
• 8th grade: Traveling to Washington, DC also involves air travel. While this trip falls a bit later in the year than others, we do not foresee a situation in which air travel will be safe enough for all of our students by February. Our trip to Washington DC is therefore cancelled, but we are exploring alternatives for a late-spring 8th-grade trip.

We will not have regular school-day field trips at this time, but we will try to make use of alternative ways to enhance the student experience with virtual alternatives.

In an effort to prevent “mixing,” we will cancel, postpone, or hold virtually all major on-campus community events. These cherished events are important. We will get as creative as we can to offer safe experiences whenever possible. We are moving some fall events to the spring in hopes that we will be able to hold them versus cancel them.

• The Back to School Breakfast will not take place this year. Instead, the PTC will host a virtual Back to School Bingo event on Monday, August 17. Bingo supplies will be picked up during the supply pick-up on Monday, August 17.
• The New Parent Dinner will not take place in September. Stay tuned for details on an alternative plan for later in the year.
• The Book Fair is being tentatively postponed to February 2021. We plan to have a celebration of books and reading during what would have been the week of Book Fair, October 19 - 23. We are still investigating our options for Spaghetti Dinner.
• The Dads Club Golf Tournament is still scheduled for the first Monday in December. Details are forthcoming.
• Grandparents and Special Friends Day has been tentatively postponed to February 12, 2021. We will make a decision later in the fall about the safety of holding this event in person.