Responsible Restart: USN's Back-to-School Guide
Director Vince Durnan shared the following letter and reopening plan with the students, parents, faculty, and staff on Friday, July 17. Zoom sessions to discuss this document with the USN community will be held Tuesday, July 21.
Dear USN community,
We find ourselves in times of enormous complexity and high stakes in readying for a return to school days on campus together. Assumptions about the course of COVID-19 response, locally and nationally, about progress that should have been made by now, continue to fall short, mandating daily reconsiderations of where we’ll be by August 18 at University School.
Many foundational points, starting with our fundamental priority to provide a safe and healthy educational environment for all our constituents, remain unchanged. But the fluidity of the public health landscape and waves of related guidance demand flexibility on our part. What follows in this document is our best sense of the way forward, including contingency considerations, built around these basic principles:
- Our goal remains to be back at 2000 Edgehill, in-person and consistent with the best medical advice. It’s universally acknowledged that young people benefit by learning and growing together, and as hard as our faculty worked last spring, they would be the first to point to the shortcoming of a remote teaching model. At the same time, we don’t exist in isolation, and we must consider the implications of current viral spread trends in our city. We need to do more than just avoid being part of the problem—this is a community challenge.
- We’re planning a broad range of mitigation efforts, in the building, in our basic routines, in our classroom practices, in what we will request of families’ efforts at home. If we can safely return to classes at 2000 Edgehill, it will be because the totality of all those measures combines to bring risk to a minimum and keep it there. School will look and feel and be different, consistent with emerging scientific understandings, vetted by a remarkable team of epidemiological and medical experts. We will ask as never before that USN families link arms with us to guarantee an essential spirit of common purpose.
- Each news cycle brings further cause for optimism, with data from schools internationally suggesting that resumption is viable, given appropriate, proven mitigation efforts, with extremely limited transmission from student to student or student to teacher. But the stark realities in Nashville, where a combination of complacency, political misperception, and disregard for the wellbeing of others, for a social contract, stand as a threat to the good work we are excited to do.
We anticipate and must be prepared for a return to remote learning for some interval(s) in the coming school year, and we will remain attentive to any Metro Nashville Public Health Department directives—but we earnestly want to be back together. That commitment is written into the plans described and detailed in the pages that follow, and I invite you to join in an active, working partnership that will provide a means to our success in this historic season.
Division Heads, the Admin Team, and I will hold morning and evening sessions on Tuesday, July 21 to discuss our Responsible Restart and answer questions.
9:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 21
Join the Zoom Meeting here or call 312-626-6799
Meeting ID: 381 223 943
Password: 261971
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21
Striving to get the balance right for all,
Director
More USN News
List of 3 news stories.
-
Senior named UVA Jefferson Scholar
University of Virginia selected Margot Ross '24 to be a Jefferson Scholar. The highly selective scholarship includes the full cost of attending UVA for four years of study as well as numerous enrichment opportunities. It has been 16 years since a University School of Nashville senior last became a Jefferson Scholar.Read More -
UNISON Dance, USN Choir spring concert April 25
Dance and choral students will come together for their spring semester performances at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 25 in Durnan Auditorium.Read More -
New softball facilities open at River Campus
The softball team opened the season with a new dugout, new equipment, and a renewed sense of school spirit.Read More
Contact
Edgehill Campus
2000 Edgehill Ave.
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-321-8000
Fax: 615-321-0889
Email: info@usn.org
River Campus
1200 County Hospital Road
Nashville, TN 37218
2000 Edgehill Ave.
Nashville, TN 37212
Phone: 615-321-8000
Fax: 615-321-0889
Email: info@usn.org
River Campus
1200 County Hospital Road
Nashville, TN 37218
USN Mission:
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.
University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.