From the Desk of the Head of School- May 22, 2020

5/21/2020

Dear Harding Academy Community,

Today would have been graduation day in a normal year. We know nothing has been normal for some time, but there is brightness on the horizon as we watch the country begin to open up. I wanted to take this opportunity to lay out, in more detail, the work we are doing to prepare for the 2020-21 school year. Let me be clear on one point right from the outset: You can count me firmly in the camp that wants to open school in person with everybody on campus. The safety and health of our families, students, faculty, and staff is paramount, of course, and that opening will most likely mean school looks different, but we are working towards a campus opening on time on August 20. Below is a more detailed outline of our preparation framework.

Scenario Development

One thing that has been consistent in this pandemic is that factors on the ground that would allow us to predict the future are always shifting. New variables are introduced, assumptions are debunked, and guidelines from local, state and federal governments range from limited to downright unhelpful. Having said that, we are working with our accrediting body, SAIS, along with the National Association of Independent Schools to help shape our basic framework for decision making and scenario development. We are focusing on three broad scenarios right now.

We open per normal and are able to stay together in school.
We open per normal with social distancing, but at some point a portion or all of our learning community must go back to quarantine and we end up toggling back and forth between home and campus over the course of the school year. Honestly, this is the scenario I expect is most likely.
We are forced to begin the school year remotely and continue in this scenario for an extended period.

In all three of these scenarios, what teaching and learning looks like are at the core of our planning and will drive decisions outward.

Teaching and Learning

When Nashville came out with its four phase plan, the guidelines for schools were noticeably missing. The CDC has since come out with more thorough guidelines and we are using these as a baseline operating tool. Finally, as I’ve mentioned above we are working with SAIS and NAIS, as well as checking in with our peer Nashville independent schools about various models of teaching and learning that we could prepare. In the spirit of focusing our work on things we can do that will serve multiple scenarios, we are focusing on three areas:

Instructional and curricular development and/or adaptation that allow for as seamless as possible a transition between the in-class experience and remote learning. You will be seeing a survey shortly soliciting your feedback and ideas.
Enhancing our technology infrastructure and platform to support a greater amount of synchronous (or face-to-face, real time) meetings. In any of the three scenarios this will be important. It becomes especially important if there is a group of students who need to be out and we can livestream the class.
Developing the protocols around safety for being physically on campus with social distancing guidelines. This includes the logistics of temperature and wellness check-ins, re-imagining the facility with 6 feet separation, employee safeguards, family safeguards, choke points on campus, lunch delivery, vendor management, event design, and so on.

While I am hopeful for a full return and we are working now towards that scenario, we will make decisions based on the best information at hand at the time. To be clear: we have not made any final decisions around these scenarios.

As a learning community, we are in this together and I am very grateful to be in it with Harding Academy. As we all enter the Summer I wanted to share the video below which is a montage of one second (sometimes multiple seconds!) for every day during the 2019-20 school year.

Have a great summer, stay safe, and stay healthy.

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