Update on Plans for August 18

Director Vince Durnan shared the following letter with the USN community on Friday, July 24 regarding the school year's gradual start.
Dear USN families,
 
This message keeps an important promise to provide an update on our plans for August 18 and the new school year, now less than a month away. Prognostication, though, remains the challenge. Our Responsible Restart plan, released a week ago today (though somehow it seems far longer), offered our best sense of how to get back to school, but it didn’t specify when we’d be at 2000 Edgehill in person. That choice seems to invoke the optimist in many constituents and the pessimist in many others, while still others just want an answer, more than likely a specific answer, connected to their circumstance. And yes, people have been willing to share their sentiments, as it should be.
 
Here we are stretching to bridge that gap, follow the data, and encourage a cooperative approach, without assuming we know more than we do. The facts are that current public health metrics land in the worrisome range, that our city continues to distinguish itself by its incapacity to follow simple guidelines en masse. At the same time, trend lines for new COVID-19 cases and for transmission rates are declining, albeit from levels far higher than what we generated a couple months ago. So what’s a school to do? My answer, our answer, is to be careful and remain flexible.
 
Let me ask you to reframe the remote/in-person start argument, to steer away from the potential Montague/Capulet feud. There are strong rationales prospectively in each direction—I hear them daily from our numerous medically trained and credentialed community members, sometimes leaving me wanting to schedule a special Zoom call just for them to clear the air with one another. But the core reality is that we just don’t know where the numbers will be in a month, and our plans will benefit from acknowledging that frustrating truth. So here’s what we propose—a gradual start.
 
Before getting to what that can mean for USN, there’s a key foundational element to be included, regardless of any discussion of timeline. Each USN family must, must, must have a plan for how they’ll handle a shift to remote schooling. Needing to shift in that direction next month, or three months later, or six months from now cannot be an unplanned shock in any household. We’ll make every effort to avoid any such news on days’ notice, but that word could come from local or state authorities on short notice. And we’ll help you brainstorm any such plans, but you need them as a hedge against factors beyond our control.
 
Once we acknowledge the necessity of being ready that way, we can think more directly about how to resume in person classes safely and in response to emerging health data trends. What that means is that as August 18 approaches, we can imagine how to start right, and incrementally, the first time. Each grade level, each Division, can imagine how to create a step-by-step proof of concept for our plans without bringing 1,080+ students back in the building on the same day to encounter an entirely new set of expectations. Length of day, schedule for the day, and number of students present can adjust and align to what we find is manageable.
 
If COVID-19 numbers improve in coming weeks, we can adjust our return pace correspondingly, and if not we will be ready to be remote. And we will surely learn from the experience of other schools—remember we have the current national upsurge before states have returned to classes. Lower School can and should do what it thinks is best and most viable, and Middle School as well, and High School in turn, as we navigate the first few weeks of school, heading for Labor Day, focusing on core challenges and needs and opportunities for those age groups and class cohorts, respectively, recalibrating as we go. We will assess in 14-day increments to provide planning time and appreciate the length of time for data trends necessary to form.
 
If you opened this email expecting a yea or nay on flinging the doors open, this is probably a letdown. But it’s an acknowledgment of at least two things—we want to be back together reliably and we see a genuine threat to that happening based on current levels of community spread. And of course we know that some of our students will not be able to leave home for school for the foreseeable future. We want a smarter, more flexible, more fine-tuned approach, and that’s where our efforts will be devoted for the next three weeks, with regular updates by Division and with details specific to those emerging plans. Fair to say we are choosing the hard way.
 
We’ve heard the breadth of sentiment, consulted with medical experts in a variety of fields, and watched other institutions land in one camp or another, public and private, North and South, nationally and globally. And this seems like the best path for us, given our singular situation.
 
Look for another round of information sessions, this time by Division in the first week of August, and as always, you’re never wrong to start with me when you reach out. We need time to keep considering scenarios, to be as responsive as fluid conditions allow, and we will not be outworked in this effort. There are no simple answers in the frustrating absence of a crystal ball, but we’re resolved to be ready for what’s ahead.
 
Moving gradually, and moving forward,
Director
 
P.S. Look also for a Commitment to Community document coming next week. It’s essential that we all do what we can to keep one another safe and healthy and that we count on one another.
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