June 1
Dear Families,
Our final week of the 2019-20 school year is upon us. Congratulations to you and your children and their teachers for those extraordinary moments of inspiration and compassion and teamwork and just for making it through. It is a year not to be forgotten.
The political situation in our country over the past week has added to the gravity of the year. Joining colleagues in this morning's Friends Council on Education's meeting for Quaker heads of schools drove home the deep belief that Friends schools, joining together in our united courage and commitment, should be leading this country in building a just society. How do we need to imagine new systems and adapt to new challenges? How do we keep providing the education that allows us to teach love and effect action in the world?
And so, my thoughts turn toward what things will look like here at Friends School of Portland next year. I want to offer two things to help us envision life for us and our students:
A. We will be running FSP summer camp for 5 weeks, beginning June 22. Many of the same assumptions and guidelines Camp Director Laura Glendening, school pediatrician Jeff Peterson, the Early Childhood teaching team, and I have developed for camp will be similar when school starts again in the fall.
Here's from a letter from camp director, Laura Glendening:
I want to assure you that we will put into place all the CDC recommended Covid-19 safety guidelines, with a focus on handwashing, physical distancing, cloth face coverings when needed, cleaning of surfaces throughout the day, and thorough cleaning of camp rooms and bathrooms each evening.
We will use the CDC recommended system of camp cohorts, where each camp group works as a bubble of staff and campers. They maintain their own separate entrance to the building, have a separate area of the school building and school land, have a separate bathroom, and function in general as their own closed system. We also have very small camp numbers, with no more than 11 campers per camp, and for the total camp season we have just 32 campers making up the roster for the whole 5 weeks of camp.
To give a bit of a picture of the way the camp day runs:
Summer camp staff will be screened before entering the building each day and will be required to wear a cloth face covering during drop off and pick up, when interacting with others outside of their camp cohort, and when interacting with campers in their cohort when 6 feet of physical distancing is not practical.
At pick-up and drop off parents and campers are asked to wear a cloth face covering and maintain 6 feet of physical distancing.
Pick-up and drop off will be staggered by 10 minutes to maintain small numbers. Because of safety precautions parents are asked to remain outside the school building and wait for their child.
Each morning your child's temperature will be taken, and we will ask a few questions about their present health condition. If your child has a temp of 100°F or higher, or seems unwell, parents will be asked to take their child home.
If a child has a temperature over 100°F, they must then be fever free for 24 hours, without the use of medicine to control the fever, before they return to camp. We ask that no form of medication that reduces a fever be given to campers before attending camp.
If you come to learn that you or your camper has been exposed to Covid-19, your camper will need to wait 14 days before returning to camp.
If at any time we are informed that a staff member, camper, or family member came into contact with Covid-19 we will immediately notify parents and the State of Maine CDC. The CDC will direct us on how to proceed.
B. In the next week, I'll send out some school year scenarios that will reflect timing, logistics, and program as best as we can know them at this point.
Following that, on Wednesday, June 10 at 6:30 pm, we will hold a Q&A Zoom session for parents to ask and answer questions about those scenarios.
It has been immensely helpful to hear your questions and concerns as we move forward together. Thank you for being willing to let us know about your struggles and hopes and for listening to me expressing the school's.
I look forward to seeing our community come together on Friday to celebrate at the 1:00 graduation assembly. It is always the best reflection of how we know and treasure the youngest through the oldest at FSP.
Sincerely,
Jenny
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Jenny Rowe
Head of School