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 negative PCR test result. 

Per CDC recommendations, any person exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms will be assumed to have COVID-19 unless they receive a negative PCR test result. People exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms will be required to either present a negative PCR test result or complete 10 days of isolation in order to return to campus. Under no circumstances will any person be allowed to return to campus with a fever. Students must always be fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medication before returning, regardless of test results. If the twentieth-fourth hour post-fever falls during a school day, please wait until the following school day before your child returns.

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 COVID-19 Response Team to follow-up with parents.

People with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms reported – ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. People with these symptoms may have COVID-19:

• 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. 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. 

Tested positive and had symptoms:

• At least 10 days since symptoms first appeared and

• At least 24 hours with no fever without fever-reducing medication and

• Other symptoms of COVID-19 are improving* and

• Completed a 10 day isolation** since the positive test or first sign of symptoms

*Loss of taste and smell may persist for weeks or months after recovery and need not delay the end of isolation

**Isolation is used to separate people infected with COVID-19 from those who are not infected. At home, anyone sick or infected should separate from others, stay in a specific “sick room” or area, and use a separate bathroom. 

Tested positive but had no symptoms:

• Isolate* for 10 after the date you had your positive test

*Isolation is used to separate people infected with COVID-19 from those who are not infected. At home, anyone sick or infected should separate from others, stay in a specific “sick room” or area, and use a separate bathroom. 

If you develop symptoms after testing positive, follow the guidance above for symptomatic cases.

Getting tested again for COVID-19

If you have recovered from your symptoms after testing positive for COVID-19, you may continue to test positive for three months or more without being contagious to others. For this reason, you should be tested only if you develop new symptoms of possible COVID-19. Getting tested again should be discussed with your healthcare provider, especially if you have been in close contact with another person who has tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 14 days.

If you have symptoms and test positive for COVID-19, follow the guidance above for “I think or know I had COVID, and I had symptoms.” Your doctor may work with an infectious disease expert at your local health department to determine when you can be around others.

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 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. While the CDC has recently released options to reduce quarantine for individuals who are close contacts, our 14-day quarantine policy remains unchanged as it continues to be their recommendation. Exceptions to the 14-day quarantine based on personal health history are listed below:  

• Children and adults who have been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 are not required to quarantine if they have been fully vaccinated (i.e., ≥2 weeks following receipt of the second dose in a 2-dose series, or ≥2 weeks following receipt of one dose of a single-dose vaccine) against the disease within the last three months and show no symptoms.

• Children and adults who have come in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, have tested positive themselves within the past 3 months and have recovered, do not have to quarantine or get tested again as long as they do not develop new symptoms. If a student's primary classroom cohort is quarantined due to a positive case, the exempted student will still be required to participate in Hearts & Minds at Home with their cohort.

Close contact is currently defined as the following:

• Having any physical contact

• Staying within 6 feet of someone for a total of 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

• They sneezed, coughed, or somehow got respiratory droplets on you

AOS will also ask people to complete a 14-day quarantine if anyone has attended an event where another guest was later known to have tested positive. Because contact tracing is especially challenging for any kind of gathering, the school will approach these situations very conservatively in an effort to keep our students, families, faculty and staff safe.

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.

In the event that a cohort’s classroom requires disinfecting, we will notify via email only the parents of that cohort and the faculty that routinely occupy the space. Please note that we will not notify parents when the symptomatic student or sibling(s) are cleared to return.

In the event that we have a positive case on campus, the entire school will be notified via email. Anyone required to quarantine and move into online learning will be alerted via voice message, text message, and email.

All identities of symptomatic students and their siblings will be kept confidential. Names of individuals who test positive for COVID-19 will also be kept confidential.

If your child has been in contact with a positive case of COVID-19 while on campus, 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. We are required to report all positive cases and close contact information to the City of Houston Health Department. If your child has been deemed a close contact of a positive case on campus, please expect a phone call from the City of Houston for their contact tracing purposes.

If your child displays any potential COVID-19 symptoms during the school year, we have detailed specific pathways you can follow for your child to return to school.

• 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 vary between divisions. 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.

• Afternoon carpool routes:
  • Jones Center & Kindergarten
  • 1st-4th Grade
  • Middle School/Combo
  • Students Needing Assistance
     
• 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.

Morning Carpool

• Arrive between 7:30-7:40 AM if possible. This will cause a shorter wait for you, and it will help us prevent congestion at the end of our carpool window. Families that arrive at this time report wait times of only a couple minutes.
   
• Students should NOT exit the car until a faculty member is standing at the car. This person will take your child’s temperature.
   
• Parents should never drive off until the faculty member gives the “all clear” on the child’s temperature. If a child presents with a fever, we will immediately ask the child to get back into the car.

Afternoon carpool

• Make sure your child knows who is going to pick him/her up every day before coming to school. 
   
• If you are going through carpool twice (once to pick up a LS child and once to pick up a MS child), please make sure your MS child knows this.

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 have implemented 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 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.

Teachers 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 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 salads (veggie and tuna or chicken salad)
• Soup

Jones Center students are encouraged to eat the main entree but also have sandwich options available.

For 1st-8th grade, SAGE only delivers 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.

Kindergarten - 2nd-grade students will use individual iPads, and 3rd-8th-grade students will use individual Chromebooks. Kindergarten-8th-grade students will bring their devices to and from school every day.

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).

Here is our complete major dates and holidays school calendar for your reference.

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 allow all middle school students to wear their official P..E uniforms all day, as it may be uncomfortable to participate in P.E. outside in a regular uniform. Students may also choose to wear uniform shorts or a skirt over their P.E. 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.

Cold Weather Items

• Jones Center & lower school

  • Girls may wear tights/leggings (navy or white) with modesty shorts.

  • Only uniform-approved items can be worn inside of the building.

  • Non-uniform outerwear such as coats, heavy jackets, hats, caps, and scarves are not permitted in the buildings but may be worn outside.

  • Please label all items with your child’s full name.
     

• Middle school
  • Students may now wear navy blue sweatpants inside during the school day. Students also have the choice to wear black, navy, or white athletic style leggings under their P.E. shorts.
  • For outerwear, students may only wear uniform-approved items while inside the building.
  • Non-uniform outerwear such as coats, heavy jackets, hats, caps, and scarves are not permitted in the buildings but may be worn outside.

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. 

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 will 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.

For the more recent updates regarding our Extended Day programs, please visit the Extended Day resource board on the portal.

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.