Dear Calhoun families,
On Friday, Calhoun filed its in-person reopening plan with the NY State Education Department. That same morning, Governor Cuomo announced that schools across the state were authorized to reopen, though he left a great deal of leeway for that decision to differ from district to district and school to school. Our plan, summarized here, is a good one, including significant investments in space and infrastructure to maximize in-person learning opportunities for our students.
Despite all this, we are writing to you today to report that on Friday, the Board of Trustees in a special meeting voted unanimously to delay our in-person reopening until October 7 and open fully remotely instead. We know this decision will be a disappointment to many, and we want to clearly explain the rationale behind it. This is a long email, and we'll try to summarize it at the end.
The Challenge
The single greatest challenge in implementing our reopening plan — and indeed any reopening plan that groups students in pods and cohorts — is our ability to test for the presence of the coronavirus. While many have focused on positive test rates as the key benchmark to guide reopening, availability and turnaround time for COVID-19 testing is equally important. While positive test levels are currently low and stable, testing options remain inadequate and turnaround times have again grown unacceptably long.
In his announcement on Friday, Governor Cuomo listed the factors parents and teachers were most concerned about, including testing. He said: "There's been a lot of questions about testing. Most of the plans will say a student comes in, temperature check and if the student has a temperature they have to be tested. What does that mean? How is the student tested? Where is the student tested? ...What happens in the interim? Teachers also want to know how a teacher can get a test and how would that be done."
Consider the scenario hinted at by the governor. After we return to school, imagine that Jane in fifth grade wakes with a fever and sore throat, or other symptoms. Our mandatory daily symptom screening home-check should catch this, so Jane's dad calls her in sick and keeps her home. Jane's symptoms are consistent with COVID-19, as well as with many of the garden variety viruses that appear at the start of the school year like ants at a picnic. Jane's doctor says it's probably not COVID-19, but administers a nasal swab test to be sure.
Our reopening plan mandates that in the event of a confirmed COVID-19 case in a student "pod" (in this case Jane's fifth grade cluster), the other students (and teachers) in that pod should enter quarantine for 14 days. But Jane is not a confirmed case — she is a possible case until the test result comes back. As Cuomo asked, "What happens in the interim?"
If testing turnaround time was 24-48 hours, we might reasonably await a test result before sending the pod into quarantine. It takes some days for viral loads to build up after an exposure, and our masks, distancing and hand hygiene provide layers of protection. However, testing turnaround times have been as high as 14 days in the NYC area in recent weeks. In light of this, we would be forced to choose between sending pods into quarantine every time a student is out sick, or gambling that a low overall prevalence rate means individual symptomatic cases are unlikely to be COVID-19. The former course would be chaotic and frightening to our students; the latter course increases risk by overriding the basic safeguards of our isolation plan.
This scenario focuses on a symptomatic case that might not be COVID-19. Testing limitations also leave us with no good choices for COVID-19 cases that are wholly or virtually asymptomatic — potentially 40% or more of all cases involving young people. While there is some evidence that asymptomatic children (especially young children) may be less effective transmitters of the disease, the picture is cloudier than it was a month ago and the research overall is inadequate. Consequently, we cannot simply rely on symptom screening to protect students and teachers.
Here's a different way to think of it: when we return to in-person learning and for a long period after that, COVID-19 will be in the population. That will be true even after we have a vaccine. We cannot expect to keep it out of the school — students and teachers will get sick. Our goal, rather, is to prevent students and teachers from contracting the disease at school. We can't hope to prevent incidence; we can hope to prevent transmission. If we quickly identify those cases that appear at school, measures like masks, distancing, ventilation and hand hygiene can greatly reduce the chances of spread. However, even those measures will ultimately fail if we have undetected cases in the community for days and days — especially given the reality that compliance with mask and distancing measures among children is never going to be 100%.
The Solution
Ultimately, to be able to implement the testing, tracing and isolation elements of our plan without sending the entire school into quarantine, we need to strengthen our testing and screening framework. Turnaround times for diagnostic tests at labs in the city need to drop to 24-48 hours reliably and consistently. The school might augment this by acquiring some rapid result testing capacity for diagnosis or potentially for limited screening of sub-populations like teachers. And we need some sort of sustainable approach to screening that will allow us to assess the risk from asymptomatic cases.
The bad news is that none of these elements are currently available. As I noted above, testing times are long and unpredictable at sites across the city. Rapid result tests currently need to be outsourced to a lab — and these services are both very expensive and have limited capacity. It remains to be seen whether these labs will be able to meet demand after Labor Day. And there is currently no technology available for convenient, affordable screening of the community — colleges and sports leagues are currently pioneering these approaches at colossal expense.
The good news is there are promising signs that this picture may change dramatically in the near future. Testing turnaround times should come back down. New rapid result test technologies — some involving less invasive probes — are receiving FDA approval and moving to scale up. And exciting new screening technologies — less sensitive but simple enough to administer every day or two — are also close to receiving FDA approval.
Hence, our decision to delay. We are not postponing in-person learning in response to a set of vague misgivings. We are acting because we feel that the tools and infrastructure we need to properly implement our plan — specifically to arrest any spread within the school — is not currently in place but is likely to emerge in the near future.
We know that some of you may feel that this decision effectively closes the door on in-person learning for the whole fall. We don't share that conclusion. We believe there is a good chance that the testing picture may look quite different in 4-6 weeks, and that a stronger monitoring framework citywide will also help to combat the "second wave" that many fear is coming. Our goal is not to reopen fitfully but rather to reopen confidently and sustainably. We believe that delaying our in-person return by one month gives us the best chance of achieving that.
We know that other schools in the city are choosing a variety of paths forward. Public schools may attempt to reopen for hybrid learning after Labor Day. Some independent and charter schools are still planning to reopen in person, while others have chosen to delay by one month or longer. Sadly, there is no clear and right answer to this dilemma, because the country has not put in place the national framework for testing, tracing and isolation that public health officials identified in April as a critical need. School leaders are left choosing between imperfect options in an environment of high uncertainty. We will be watching closely those schools that do reopen in September to learn from their experiences as we plan for our reopening.
Next Steps
This decision shifts our focus from our hybrid learning — for which planning will continue with a new focus on early October — to our distance learning opening of school on September 10. Information on class schedules will be forthcoming in the next week or two from division leaders.
In addition, we are looking at finding times in September for small groups to meet for optional orientation-type activities, using outdoor spaces. We understand that students are eager to reconnect — and students new to Calhoun or moving to new divisions within the school are particularly eager to make connections with new classmates and teachers. We'll be exploring ways to have some in-person opportunities safely, and since we recognize that not all students will be able to participate, these will be just one element of our broader orientation program.
We are also trying to choreograph opportunities for in-person conferences for families at the start of the year — particularly for Lower School families. Even if we succeed at arranging these, remote conferences will still be an option.
We also understand that this decision to open with distance learning may create acute childcare challenges for some families, and we are exploring whether there are ways in which we can provide some options to address this. I wish I could provide more details on this right now, but we are still trying to understand what is and isn't possible given the monitoring and health concerns I've outlined above.
Finally, we are also exploring restructuring vacation time later in the year — potentially lengthening Winter Break by one week and extending the school year one week longer into June. If we are in person in Dec./Jan., this would allow for a longer window for travel around the holidays (permitting a period of self-isolation and/or testing for students back in NY before returning to class). At the same time, this would allow us to extend the period in June when the in-person experience may look more "normal." We are mindful of the timing of summer programs that may begin in June, and will follow up with more details on this later in the fall.
Steps After That
We are grateful beyond words to the small army of administrators, teachers and staff who sacrificed much of their summer creating our reopening plans. That planning should put us in a strong position in October when, hopefully, we'll reopen our doors for students. The elements of that plan, which the school outlined on July 31, remain the same — students will be grouped in pods or cohorts, and parents will have the option of joining remotely in any grade provided we have adequate notice. Given our decision to delay in-person learning, we will also delay sending our questionnaire asking you to indicate whether your student will begin the year in-person or remotely. Instead, we will send that in September, when we will also update our projections for reopening.
We know that many of you will have questions, and we invite you to join one of two open forums for families — at either Wed., Aug. 12 at 4pm, or Thurs., Aug. 13 at 9am. We may not have all the answers, but we'll do our best to follow up with FAQs and other updates. And since we have covered a lot of ground in this message, here's a summary of the most important parts:
- Calhoun will start the school year remotely and delay in-person reopening until Oct. 7.
- The main motivating factor for delaying in-person reopening is current limitations in testing and screening (particularly testing availability and turnaround times).
- There are promising advances in testing technology that allow us to remain optimistic about our ability to open in person in October.
- We are exploring possibilities for some small group in-person orientation activities, as well as potential childcare options for families with acute needs.
- Two virtual open forums for families will be held on Wed., Aug. 12 at 4pm, and Thurs., Aug. 13 at 9 am. Invitations will follow shortly.
Let us close by saying again that we understand this decision will evoke strong feelings in the community — relief from some, frustration from others. We have tried here to explain both why the administration and Board came to this conclusion, and why we feel the challenges we face are surmountable even in the short term. We are grateful to all of you who have written in recent weeks with encouragement and support, and to those who have shared your anxieties and your hopes. We remain confident, as we have since March, that by keeping our focus on our students and on the core elements of our mission — fostering a joy of learning in a supportive, resilient community that is open to adaptation and improvisation — we will make this coming school year a great one.
In partnership,