That Labor Day Update

Sixty-four kindergartners come to campus next week with those families moving to use the Magnus Mobile app to report students' health screening information daily. Read on for an overview of the gradual return to in-person classes over the next few weeks. Division Heads will share details with families as they make plans with faculty.
If you asserted that I promised we’d keep watching and assessing between our opening morning of classes (17 days ago) and this week you’d be right. And then if you said further that you’ve noticed our city’s public health metrics moving Nashville from the bright red of then to the fading orange of now you’d be further right. Then, finally, if you wondered whether those indicators put us in range of opening in person, especially for our youngest charges, you’d be right again. Happy almost Labor Day. Now let’s help keep those declining trends moving.
 
The important details about the how and the when now emanate from our Division Heads, united in an approach that’s incremental, to test our mitigation measures as we reacclimate, but attentive to the very different realities of LS, MS, and HS. So I’ll type fast and make an effort to be uncharacteristically brief:
 
Lower School, and kindergarten in particular, will be the gear that turns the whole process at the outset. They’ll be back in fractions of increasing size over three days next week. Then grades 1-4 come back step by step over the next two weeks, and then we bring on After School once we have access to those classrooms upstairs for the new cohort AS model. Each week from now on we’ll turn the dial up and make any adjustments revealed as necessary by experience.
 
Middle School will feature a different gradual model, working grade by grade starting in another 10 days, having done small group gatherings between now and then to help with orientation and reconnection. And High School, the most complex logistical challenge and the hardest to meaningfully cohort, comes in the weeks thereafter, assuming of course that our community case numbers continue to cooperate. My optimism, having seen independent schools nearby resume in stages, with few closures and dozens but not hundreds of reasons to quarantine, and seeing Vandy test positivity numbers down in the 1% range, is greater by the day. But vigilance is essential.
 
Two more progress reports—the first is on the rapid response saliva test trial being developed by the Medical Center across the street. The practical and paperwork elements are very much in process, and my hope is that we’ll have something to share in detail next week. We are signed on as partners and we’re waiting for clearance. Another meeting tomorrow to talk about logistics.
 
And secondly, the how-to video of instructions for downloading the Magnus Mobile app and completing the daily screener questions before heading to school is in beta testing now and special communication shared just as soon as it’s ready. And in the meantime, continue to use the web form at usn.org/screening the way we have all summer.
 
Reaching all the way back to letters I sent in early April, the Goldilocks challenge (of some families feeing like our return to school porridge might be a little too hot and others finding it a little too cold) persists. My commitment, leaning on an amazing group of colleagues and an all-star Medical Consult team, continues in pursuit of getting it just right, with the cooperation and empathy-strained efforts of many hundreds of good people across USN constituencies.
 
May our county, now the 75th least COVID-challenged of our state’s 95, rise to the challenge of a three-day weekend, one household at a time.
 
And may we be refreshed as we look ahead,
Vince Durnan
Director
 
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