Dear Calhoun Community,
I hope this note finds you all safe and well and that your students are excited to start phasing back to in-person learning. We're expecting to see about 80% of our students back in our classrooms over the next few weeks, with about 20% of families electing to remain remote. If you have not communicated with the school about your intentions, please do so now.
I want to update you on our plans to conduct health and safety screening for the community to support our return to campus.
Health Questionnaire
As you are all hopefully aware, we will be collecting state-mandated screening information daily for all students and employees. Every morning, you will receive a text and email with a link to our health questionnaire. It will ask whether the student/employee has a fever — please answer based on an actual taking of temperature. It will also ask about symptoms and recent travel.
We are counting on all members of the community to complete this questionnaire daily and honestly. Individuals who have not completed this screening questionnaire will not be allowed into school. I realize that completing this form daily will grow tedious. Unfortunately, it is a state requirement and one of the layers of protection we have for the community. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.
COVID-19 Testing
Another layer of protection is regular screening of community members for possible COVID-19 infection. A couple of weeks ago, I reported on our plans to start with rapid testing of employees and to introduce saliva-based testing for students through a program at Weill Cornell. We have been conducting employee screenings for the last three weeks without incident and will continue this week. However, an internal reorganization at Weill Cornell has delayed availability of their saliva-based individual test.
Consequently, we have decided to shift our strategy and will begin next week conducting saliva-based pooled sample testing of all students and employees. Partnering with Brooklyn-based Mirimus Labs, we will begin sending home sample kits weekly with students and employees so that they can bring saliva samples to school the following morning. Mirimus will combine samples and test them in groups of 24, using highly sensitive PCR technology that detects viral RNA. If testing returns a positive result for a pool of 24 individuals, the lab will then retest the samples in pairs (no additional collection is needed) to narrow the positive result down to two individuals. We would then ask those two individuals to isolate and seek additional testing.
Mirimus is also in the final stages of identifying a partner to introduce the SalivaDirect technology pioneered by Yale and the NBA to narrow a positive pair down to a positive individual. That extension should be in place shortly and should enhance our screening capabilities.
The approach used by Mirimus has been successfully adopted by a number of schools. It is accurate, cost-effective and delivers results within 24 hours. I am hopeful it will offer the additional level of protection — on top of symptom screening, masks, social distancing and hand hygiene — to help us prevent transmission of the virus at school.
We will be providing a lot more information about the testing program in the next few days as we put in place the administrative framework to distribute, collect and accurately track samples. I ask you to read this information carefully, as we'll be relying on every family and every employee to follow the instructions to collect the saliva sample and to remember to bring it to school on the weekly collection day for your grade or department.
One additional point on testing: Several people have asked me why the school is not requiring students to get a COVID-19 test before returning to school. The short answer is that these intake or gateway testing requirements make much more sense for creating a virus-free bubble — in a sports league, film set or even college dorm — than for a day school embedded in the urban grid. Requiring families to get tests prior to school would impose an uneven burden on our community — as some families have access to a much wider range of testing options than others — and the results we would obtain might be up to a week old and of limited use.
Endurance and Flexibility
Lastly, I want to acknowledge that we'll be asking a lot of everyone in the community in the next few weeks. We're asking you to read a lot of emails (we'll try to use videos too), do temperature and symptom screenings, remember to return saliva sample tubes, and adjust to myriad new routines in our buildings (or, for grades 3-5, to adjust to an entirely new building!). Further, I have no doubt that some of our carefully thought out procedures will have to change because we'll realize that they are too cumbersome or they don't work.
I hope you'll look at all these twists and turns as evidence that we're constantly evaluating what works and what doesn't and adjusting as we go. No school year has begun like this in over a century — there is no standard playbook for what we are doing. We've learned a lot already from the experience of schools that were open in September, and we will continue to learn and model resilience for our students. The month ahead will be challenging, and yet I'm thrilled that we will be taking important steps — together — along the road back to a new "normal."
As always, please be in touch with questions or concerns.
In partnership,
The Calhoun School: www.calhoun.org
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