From the Desk of the Head of School- August 27, 2021

8/27/2021

Dear Harding Academy Learning Community,

We have just completed our first full week of school. It’s been hot and sticky, but it’s been wonderful. Yesterday, a teacher sent all of us an absolutely adorable picture of one of their students she knew would bring a smile to all of our faces. It was a small gesture, but it reminded us - even so early in the school year - what we are all about. Our kids.

It is clear how important this learning community is to so many people. In the midst of uncertainty, Harding Academy has demonstrated that we will be here to teach and learn, to inspire and challenge, to celebrate and console. All of this has been done over the last eighteen months to minimize risk to our students, families, faculty, and staff. However, we have never been able to minimize risk completely. Over the course of the pandemic, we have followed guidance from the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, our medical experts, and our local health departments to put processes in place to manage risk as best we are able while staying in person and on campus.

This summer, I am sure we were all quite hopeful that those risk management steps related to the pandemic would be reduced, as the case count dipped to near pre-pandemic numbers. However, as we have all seen, those conditions have changed dramatically with the onset of the Delta variant. We changed as well. As I said all of our mitigation strategies are grounded in guidance from the CDC and AAP which seeks to balance the benefits of in person learning and keeping kids safe. Regardless, we were always going to have student cases and I think the fact that they came so quickly was disorientating.

Here are the facts at school as of this writing:

We have 5 active cases. This represents 0.83% of our population of students, faculty, and staff.
We have 37 students in quarantine, which represents 7.18% of our population. These are quarantines due to a positive PCR test, being deemed a close contact (at school or from outside contact), having a pending test, or because students have stayed home due to symptoms or sickness.

All in all, this is a very manageable position considering the playbook we have to draw from which we developed last year. Additionally, we have adapted in a number of ways (based on that playbook) to provide further mitigation strategies at school, while still preserving aspects of our whole child learning community that are mission critical, like assembly and recess. Some of those include:

We have encouraged our teachers to take their classes outside to eat as much as they can. This includes snack and lunch. Last year we ate both snack and lunch outside as much as possible, but we did eat in our classrooms as well, so this is a continuation of that approach.
We will be having assembly outside at Kever Park for the foreseeable future, spread out under the shade. We had our first assembly out there this week, and while it was hot, it was great to be together, if distanced.
We were always ready to offer remote learning to those students who were in quarantine due to a positive test for COVID-19 or who had been deemed a close contact. In the last week we have expanded the eligibility for remote learning to any student in a grade level with a positive case for the duration of the quarantine of a close contact.
We continue to access the data and the risk and will adapt events as needed. For example, our Back to School Night for Grades 1-4 next week will be virtual.

We also need your help to preserve our ability to be in person and on campus as much as possible. Nobody dreaded the morning Magnus App as much as I did each morning last year, knowing I had to fill it out three times. But it did remind me to consider the following critical indicators for the safety of my kids and the broader Harding community:

I knew if my kids had any of the symptoms listed, I shouldn’t take them to school. Please remember this! Please don’t send your child to school if they have any symptoms. We will ask you to come pick up your child if they are showing symptoms and we will likely need a negative PCR test to allow them to return.
I knew if there was a pending PCR test in my household, none of my kids could go to school. Unless your child is vaccinated, this still holds true - don’t send your child to school if there is a pending test in the household or a household contact is displaying symptoms and there is a plan to go get a test. We don’t want to have to pull your child and send them home because a parent has tested positive and the child was at school. This will help cut down on quarantines as well should the child then test positive. I know the Magnus app symbolizes the drudgery of last year and no one wants it to come back, but if instances like the two above continue to happen, we may have no choice.

One of the lessons learned over the course of last year is that our students need to be engaged with one another socially. It is critical to their mental, physical, and emotional well being and this has perhaps been the most challenging aspect of this whole pandemic. Families make different decisions about the risk level they are willing to take on with outside activities and each family is entitled to that. In fact, as a school we believe it is important for our students to be able to play with students in other classes at recess and PE, as well as to have opportunities after school to socialize. These are the reasons we have brought programs back like our after school clubs and lower school cross country and athletics. Many of our families are willing to take this risk as well with outside recreation commitments. We believe that we have appropriate mitigation strategies in place to accept that risk. We just all need to understand that in the current state of the pandemic, these outside activities beyond Harding do elevate the risk factor for our children at school. We ask that you consider that.

Finally, we have had a great week at Harding Academy doing school. Rehearsals for the Lion King have begun, our middle school went on day retreats to build class cohesion and develop their leadership skills, we sang happy birthday to our August birthdays at our assembly in Kever Park, and the first homework assignments around goals for the year began to trickle home. As I said last year and believe again this year: our kids will be adding and subtracting, reading and writing, considering and debating, laughing and celebrating in person, on campus, at school. And it is good.

Thank you for all your support. Have a wonderful and safe weekend.

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