From the Desk of the Head of School- October 30, 2020
Dear Parents,
We have made it to the end of another month and we are still in school, on campus, and together. Thank you for your efforts to keep our learning community safe so we can continue to operate together. This week our faculty met during our Late Start Wednesday meeting and reflected on our bimodal approach to teaching and learning. As I have said many times before, and what came through again loud and clear, was that what our faculty need in terms of support more than anything is the gift of time.
So, we will take November 23 and the half day of November 24 off for the week of Thanksgiving - giving everybody a full week off from school.
Having said that, our fundamental operating principle since June has been that we will be open, in-person, all together, and on campus. This remains our fundamental operating principle while we are in Phase 3 of Nashville's reopening plan. If we are able, we will stay open and in-person until we are told by the Metro Board of Health, or some other governmental outfit, that we need to close. In talking with Dr. Jahangir, Chair of the Metro Board of Health, earlier this fall, the reason the City would do something like this would be if we were the source of community spread. We have clearly demonstrated that we are not a source of community spread - in fact it is quite the opposite. Positive cases in our community have been the result of outside activities. Furthermore, our contact tracing and mitigation strategies work. We have not seen internal spread at Harding Academy.
I am not discounting the concern of the broader Davidson County COVID-19 surge in cases, but we are in a different place than we were in July. We have demonstrated that we can operate in-person with a hybrid option and it works. We have all seen the benefits to the students of keeping the doors open and having us join together in community on campus.
I also recognize that for some, their highest risk activity is coming here to school. However, we are a school with a well understood and engrained calendar and a community that depends on us to be open to meet the needs of our students. We have offered, and will continue to offer, options to protect our families and faculty as best we can, but we are in the risk mitigation business, not the risk erasure business and everything points to being at school as a low risk spot compared to other places in our immediate locality.
So, we will now have the entire week of Thanksgiving off. When we return we will continue to work to deliver our current model that has proven to be one that achieves our fundamental goal from June: to be in-person, on campus, together. We will leverage that time between Thanksgiving and Winter Break to deliver on our mission together.
We have made it to the end of another month and we are still in school, on campus, and together. Thank you for your efforts to keep our learning community safe so we can continue to operate together. This week our faculty met during our Late Start Wednesday meeting and reflected on our bimodal approach to teaching and learning. As I have said many times before, and what came through again loud and clear, was that what our faculty need in terms of support more than anything is the gift of time.
So, we will take November 23 and the half day of November 24 off for the week of Thanksgiving - giving everybody a full week off from school.
Having said that, our fundamental operating principle since June has been that we will be open, in-person, all together, and on campus. This remains our fundamental operating principle while we are in Phase 3 of Nashville's reopening plan. If we are able, we will stay open and in-person until we are told by the Metro Board of Health, or some other governmental outfit, that we need to close. In talking with Dr. Jahangir, Chair of the Metro Board of Health, earlier this fall, the reason the City would do something like this would be if we were the source of community spread. We have clearly demonstrated that we are not a source of community spread - in fact it is quite the opposite. Positive cases in our community have been the result of outside activities. Furthermore, our contact tracing and mitigation strategies work. We have not seen internal spread at Harding Academy.
I am not discounting the concern of the broader Davidson County COVID-19 surge in cases, but we are in a different place than we were in July. We have demonstrated that we can operate in-person with a hybrid option and it works. We have all seen the benefits to the students of keeping the doors open and having us join together in community on campus.
I also recognize that for some, their highest risk activity is coming here to school. However, we are a school with a well understood and engrained calendar and a community that depends on us to be open to meet the needs of our students. We have offered, and will continue to offer, options to protect our families and faculty as best we can, but we are in the risk mitigation business, not the risk erasure business and everything points to being at school as a low risk spot compared to other places in our immediate locality.
So, we will now have the entire week of Thanksgiving off. When we return we will continue to work to deliver our current model that has proven to be one that achieves our fundamental goal from June: to be in-person, on campus, together. We will leverage that time between Thanksgiving and Winter Break to deliver on our mission together.
Inspiring The Mind • Nurturing The Spirit