Chapter Three: Health and Safety

Dear Harding Academy Learning Community,

It is evident that the pace of the summer has picked up and the start of school is now upon us. On Tuesday our new faculty and staff will be on campus, followed by all faculty and staff, and then before we know it, August 19, 2021 will be here and we will be welcoming your children back to campus for the start of another school year. In doing so, we will be welcoming an experience that may feel more normal than last year, but we have to acknowledge that much has changed. In some ways, life will always feel in flux, and the same is true for life at Harding Academy as we look to safely navigate the school year. 

This chapter will lay out how we will start the school year as it relates to our health and safety protocols regarding COVID-19. As I have stated in my previous two chapters, we are prepared to bring back various health and safety measures should the need arise - we know what works and can move to it. We will consider the CDC guidelines, TN Department of Health, and Nashville Metro Health Department guidance for schools, as well as the data behind the potential medical impact of COVID-19 on our students (especially our youngest) to inform our approach to masks, quarantines, and contact tracing. While the broader national and Nashville community data is important, we will also focus on our more local independent school and Harding Academy communities where the vast majority of our family activities are taking place. 

One thing is clear from the school’s perspective: “in developing school safety plans for fall 2021, we need to acknowledge that the risk of COVID-19 to any one individual is most influenced by their vaccination status….Schools with high vaccination rates will navigate this school year much more easily than schools with lower vaccination rates, including elementary school settings where students have not yet been offered vaccination.” (Childrens’ Hospital of Philadelphia Policy Lab, Guidance for In-person Education in K-12 Educational Settings, July 2021). While not a current requirement, the school encourages vaccination for all eligible members of the community as a means to minimize potential infection, to control the spread of COVID-19, and to limit the possibility of being considered a close contact of any individual who may have tested positive. 

As the last couple of weeks of news regarding the Delta variant and the flurry of guidelines and information coming our way has clearly demonstrated, our current situation is fluid, and things need to change from where we would like to be. If you had asked me in June, we felt confident about a mask optional approach, but today we feel it is more prudent to begin the school year with masks being required indoors for all students, faculty, and visitors while maintaining a mask optional approach when students and faculty are outdoors.  This has been the policy for our Summer Programs and represents a continuation of that policy. 

I want to be clear that we are implementing this approach not as a full year policy, but as a temporary mitigation strategy to hopefully see us through this surge safely. We will reassess on or around Labor Day and hope to eventually get back to our preferred default position vis-a-vis masks, which is mask optional. We will consider our Harding Academy data, the independent school community data, input from our medical advisors, as well as guidance from the CDC, TN Department of Health, and Nashville Metro Health Department. For us, “high vaccination rates, strong community commitment to testing when individuals feel ill with COVID like symptoms and low COVID-19 incidence make up the essential foundation for a mask-optional approach.” (Childrens’ Hospital of Philadelphia Policy Lab, Guidance for In-person Education in K-12 Educational Settings, July 2021). 

Hand hygiene and habits of keeping spaces clean with disinfectant are baseline tools that we know are good practice and will remain in force this year. We also know from experience that students with symptoms staying home protects the learning community from the spread of viruses - whether it be COVID-19 or something else. We will continue to urge you all to keep your child home and talk to your pediatrician should your child have symptoms. If they develop symptoms at school we will continue to identify, isolate and ask that you take them home as we did last year. Furthermore, we will remain vigilant in checking and monitoring daily symptom checks for those individuals. 

Social Distancing: The CDC has adapted their guidelines for social distancing in K-12 schools to say that three feet is an acceptable distance. Additionally the quarantine guidance states that students who do not break that barrier for fifteen consecutive minutes over a 24 hour period and are both masked will not need to quarantine. We will adopt those guidelines. 

No Quarantine for Vaccinated Individuals: Students or faculty who are vaccinated will not need to quarantine. They may come to school but we recommend following CDC guidelines and get a test after three to five days from exposure, monitor for symptoms, and when outside of school, wear a mask indoors and in public for fourteen days (or until a negative test result). If a fully vaccinated person tests positive, they should remain home and quarantine per the CDC recommendations. 

Quarantine for Unvaccinated Individuals: Students or faculty who are unvaccinated and are considered a close contact should remain at home, get tested, and quarantine per the CDC recommendations. We will accept a return to the classroom after seven days if the person received a negative test between days five and seven. 

COVID-19 Testing at Harding Academy: Harding Academy will bring back its partnership with PathGroup for COVID-19 PCR testing in order to better serve our families should a need for testing arise, but families will need to create their own accounts on PathGroup’s website, as our School Nurse, Moira Clark, will not be emailing results directly to families. They will be accessible in a personalized portal.  

Contact Tracing: Last year, the school would contact trace, identify close contacts, and work with the Metro Health Department to quarantine. Considering the scope of the pandemic at that time, it was necessary to do so. This year, however, we will let the Metro Health Department take back the lead for contact tracing. Students, faculty, and staff who have tested positive for COVID-19 will be responsible for notifying close contacts, as well as the Metro Health Department and/or the TN Department of Health, as well as our School Nurse, Moira Clark. As we did last year, we will notify parents in a homeroom, travel group, team, or activity of a positive case, but Harding Academy will not conduct contact tracing or send quarantine notifications. You can expect more details around this from Moira Clark, our School Nurse as we get closer to the start of the school year. 

Please also note our new policy regarding remote learning which I outlined in Chapter Two: Teaching & Learning (July 23) - it will only be granted in extraordinary circumstances via a formal application or if your child tests positive for COVID-19 and must quarantine or has been deemed a close contact and must quarantine. 

Harding Academy remains committed to providing upgraded ventilation systems throughout our buildings, as well as individual air purifiers in each classroom and all offices. We also realized the benefits of students being outside more often last year and will continue to encourage our teachers to bring their students outside for class, lunches, and other experiences. We have retained Brooke Powell, our second nurse who we hired last year and are excited to have her back in the fold for this year. We will no longer require the daily Magnus health check in.

I want to thank you all for your support of Harding Academy and as we enter our 50th Anniversary year, I am just so very excited for us to come back together in a learning community that values the relationships that make this place so special. You can expect more typical back to school information from your children’s division directors over the next few weeks.