From the Desk of the Head of School- July 17, 2020

7/17/2020

Dear Harding Academy Community,

I am sure you all are following the case count in Davidson County as closely as I am. On Tuesday, the Health Department and Mayor Cooper indicated that we will be in modified Phase 2 “for the foreseeable future.” Again, we will be able to open school in person in this modified Phase 2 and we will offer a distance learning experience for those families who fall in high risk categories. To reiterate, families may choose when to send their child to school. We will support you as you each thoughtfully determine what conditions you need before sending your child back to campus. Harding Academy will educate your child through distance learning if you choose to keep them at home, whether it is for health, safety, or conscience.

I will be speaking in more detail about this model in Chapter 5: Teaching & Learning, but to preview: it will incorporate our new OWL Meeting Pro cameras which will allow students to tune into class via Google Meet on our secure platform. We are in the midst of creating units and lessons that reflect a “bimodal” approach - meaning instruction that can easily and naturally pivot between in person and remote learning, which will mean that the ways students access content and produce outcomes will live on either Showbie or Google Classrooms, depending on grade level.

Today, however, I want to focus on Operations. Specifically, how some fundamental aspects of the basic operations of the school have changed as a result of opening up in a pandemic.

Arrival & Pickup

I often say I needed a civil engineering course to help figure out carpool. It certainly would have been very helpful in recreating what morning and afternoon hook up should look like as we work to unload 513 students and verify compliance with a daily screening survey, while maintaining social distancing protocols and one way foot traffic flow around campus and in our buildings. However, we have taken our best shot and, if you will excuse the rudimentary nature of the diagrams, we think we can manage it in the way outlined below. We reserve the right to tweak or reimagine as we go, since we will all be new to this in the fall.

Morning Drop Off

Carpool (or Hook Up) will begin at 7:28 AM, per usual.
Cars will not go past the corner of the Depot by the PreK Annex and will still load both lanes back to the blue barrel.
We will be creating 8 unloading boxes which will hold four cars per box. A faculty/staff member will be assigned to each box. Starting with Box 1 and moving backwards once all cars in a box are parked, the faculty/staff member will be checking the health screening survey, making sure students are masked up, and then sending them directly to their classrooms. Once a box is cleared, cars will be sent on their way - no whistle.
We are working towards a goal of having a box cleared in no more than 90 seconds once the cars have pulled in and stopped.
We will still have a faculty/staff member stand at the crosswalk who will monitor bikers and walkers, check for their screening surveys, and make sure they are masked up.

Figure 1: Rough Sketch of Morning Hook Up

Afternoon Carpool

For Lower School afternoon hook up, we will extend the walk through to the back of the middle school to increase the loading opportunities.
Students will be socially distanced in the depot, on the turf field or in the Schwartz Center until the next set of cars has pulled all the way up and we will repeat the extended walk through.
We expect that after a second or third walk through, we will only have a few students left that can be socially distanced in the depot.
For Middle School students, we will run hook up via our walkie and intercom systems. Students will remain in their classrooms and a faculty/staff member will radio in names from either the entrance or the Compass Rose. Students will head to the depot, wait socially distanced from each other and masked up and enter cars when the set is stopped.

Pursuit, Early Care, and Late Start Wednesdays (LSW)

Pursuit
Pursuit, or after school care, has really necessitated a reimagination of terms as it relates to offering this service amidst a pandemic. First, you should know now that all the work we are doing during the school day to keep homerooms or travel groups as confined as possible breaks down to some extent in an after school care model. We will ask that you sign a waiver to this point if you choose to enroll your child in Pursuit. Second, having said that up front, we are asking all families to consider thinking about Pursuit more like Essential Care than like the fun and engaging model it has been in years past. We will not be able to offer our typical program this year. So, with that all out of the way, you can hearre from Pursuit Director, Mark Jones, at this LINK around some of the details you can expect from Pursuit this year:

We will be keeping students who are signed up for Pursuit in Grade Level groups in a Grade level classroom throughout the lower school. Pursuit workers will go to them and supervise in that space.
We will be adapting the Kinderlime check out process to be as touchless as possible, but pick up will remain at the Depot near the PreK Annex, with a radio system, but students may be coming farther so the timing may be longer.
If your child is taking individual lessons that can be offered within the re-opening guidelines, the instructor will have to come pick that student up and drop them off back at Pursuit, rather than having a Pursuit staff person escorting them.
Middle School will continue to offer after school study hall per our reopening guidelines, but will have overflow classrooms ready to go if attendance increases. After 5 PM, we will have a dedicated middle school room for those who would normally attend Pursuit.

Early Care
We are able to continue to offer Early Care in the cafeteria from 7:00 - 7:20 AM on M, T, TH, F while socially distancing attendees at each table. Out of an abundance of caution we have to cap capacity at 22 students, which is equal to the number of round cafeteria tables. We are working on a pre registration process for this service. We will have someone at the Compass Rose checking the screening app and making sure students are masked up.

Late Start Wednesday
We will continue with our Late Start Wednesdays and morning hook up will begin at 8:28 AM with the new system in place. In years’ past we have divided up those students who have been dropped off early (or at normal drop off times) into grade level groups in the cafeteria and Lower School science rooms. This year, we will use our afternoon Pursuit model as students go into one grade level classroom and middle school students will be in downstairs classrooms. Faculty/Staff will rotate by week between professional development and student supervision.

Extracurriculars & After School Clubs

We will allow one-on-one lessons such as piano, strings, or singing with the appropriate safety protocols in place and with Harding employees. The Harding Academy School of Dance is working on their own safety protocols fashioned off the reopening guidelines as well as best practices, but this will, like Pursuit, mean the potential for mixing of cohorts after a day of intentional separation thereby requiring an acknowledgement of the increased risk therein. We will not be offering after school clubs unless we move into Phase 4. Chess club will likely remain a remote offering.

Lunch

Lunch will be eaten in classrooms. Families can choose to bring in their own lunch or preorder from FLIK a boxed lunch that will be delivered to the classroom. Depending on who is in your child(ren)’s class, there may be an allergy restriction in the classroom to keep students safe. Your homeroom teacher or advisor will let you know about that. Families who are choosing FLIK have the following options:

Select semester or annual meal plan
Select the declining balance program to order a la carte each day
Order meals in advance with Nutri Slice, Flik’s online menu and ordering app

Facility Updates

Turf Tent: We continue to pursue this as an option for this year and are working with our vendors to make this a reality.
Classroom Changes: We are actively working to reduce any non-essential furniture in classrooms to provide as much space as possible to spread our desks out. Basically, we only want student desks and a teacher desk in the classroom. That means couches, chairs, beanbags, canoes, tubs, etc. will be removed from the classrooms.

Partitions: We have ordered and the first set of partitions has arrived on campus. They are plexiglass dividers which have been custom designed to fit our lower school and middle school desks. We expect to have enough to place one at every learning space on campus by the start of school. Students will be expected to wear masks if within six feet of each other or if the teacher asks for them to do so.

Cubbies and Lockers: We will not be using cubbies or lockers this year. It is nearly impossible to socially distance students from each other with the current infrastructure of cubbies in the lower school and lockers in 5th through 8th grades. Students will be encouraged to bring back packs which will be by their desks or travelling with them throughout the day. Again, with our work towards a bimodal instructional delivery, we are hoping to further reduce the amount of material which needs to be in those backpacks.

Campus Flow: We have designated up and down staircases in our lower and middle school buildings, as well as ordered signage which will indicate directional flow in the buildings for students and faculty. Additionally, we have indicated exit and entry doorways for each of our buildings.

PreK and Kindergarten cohorts: With the new AAP guidelines, as well as creative thinking, we were able to bring our PreK class back into its space while still maintaining cohorts within the group. Additionally, we have been able to reduce our Kindergarten cohorts from five to four, as we have torn down a closet in the Kindergarten activity room to provide a fourth classroom. Therefore, our Art teachers will have their spaces as a homebase for teaching, allowing middle school art to function in their space while lower school Art will be in the homerooms.

Certainly, much of what is above will involve necessary refinements and changes, but we have spent a lot of time working to imagine these operations in light of our new reality. We appreciate your patience as we navigate what these look like in real time.

Finally, as always, should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Additionally, if you find your financial situation has been adversely impacted by COVID-19 and you want to inquire about the school’s temporary emergency financial aid program, please reach out to tefa@hardingacademy.org.

Thank you for your support,

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