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Sept 13: Letter to Families

Dear Bryn Mawr Families,

As we begin the third week of school, we welcome the fourth, fifth and sixth grades, who will start on campus tomorrow morning, which significantly increases our student population. Tonight, we informed Upper School families of a change to their staggered reopening due to two outbreaks in the local high school-aged population. At this time, there has been no campus exposure at Bryn Mawr, but we are going to require testing of the Upper School students, and will slow down their return to campus. As we begin to ramp up the student presence on campus, I want to share some observations we have made over the last two weeks.

I assume that the large majority of parents want to keep campus open and thriving. As we stated this summer, our ability to do so depends on Bryn Mawr students’ and families’ willingness to support the health and safety protocols we have established in our Community Commitment. Our younger students have been terrific with following these new rules on campus. As we add older girls, continuing this cooperation is vital. I hope we can depend on families supporting these four essential measures going forward.

The first safety measure we have in place is keeping symptomatic or potentially exposed individuals off campus until COVID-19 is ruled out. This is a parent’s most important responsibility before students arrive on campus. It is imperative to accurately report on the MyMedBot app. Each morning, please evaluate your child for any symptoms that could be related to COVID-19. Answer the questions based on real time information. Even if the symptoms are mild, we ask you to keep her home until the symptoms resolve or COVID-19 is ruled out by a physician. This is not meant to feel punitive, but it is a very important measure to stop the spread. Your daughter can easily participate remotely in classes and activities until she is able to return. It is also essential that if your child has been exposed to anyone else with COVID-19, or if she has been in a location with a high incidence of COVID-19, that she remain home until it is clear that she has not contracted the virus. Please understand that a student coming to campus—even with a cold, allergies or sore throat—has ripple effects across the community for her classmates, their families and our teachers.
The second responsibility really falls to students, and that is to wear a mask at all times on campus, indoors and out, with two exceptions. Students are allowed mask breaks outdoors if they are more than 10 feet apart. Students may also take their masks off while eating. Whenever possible, eating should take place outdoors, which lowers the risk of transmission. Waiting for a carpool? Masks on. Passing between classes? Masks on. During PE/Dance/Yoga? Masks on unless the instructor says otherwise. Basically, if a student is on campus, her mask should be worn covering the nose, mouth and chin. As parents and guardians, you can support this by reinforcing its importance with your daughters.
Third, maintaining a six-foot distance from others is hard for students to remember but very important. We have placed daisy stickers around campus to help students envision what a six-foot distance looks like. Teachers and assistants will give reminders but our students, older students in particular, need to embrace this as their responsibility, even when they are unsupervised.
Last, frequent hand-washing or sanitizing needs to become a habit. We've increased the number of hand-washing stations around campus to remind us all. Hand-washing times have been built into the schedule for our younger students several times during the day. Older girls can remember to wash hands before and after lunch, and to sanitize as they move from one location to another.

We cannot take COVID-19 lightly. Physician parents who are seeing the effects of the pandemic in their clinical practices remind us of its prevalence and the potential severity of the impact it has on individuals. Rises in cases in children have been documented over the last month. Frankly, I am most concerned about our Upper School students' ability to adhere to our conventions. Where we are seeing most positive cases now are in club sports teams, or as a result of sleepovers and teen gatherings. In these situations, it is very challenging for teens to remember to follow the protocols. While we cannot ask you to completely avoid these situations, we do ask that you keep your student home if she has participated, especially if you hear about an outbreak or know that any direct contact of hers tested positive OR is being tested. Let good judgment and care for others prevail, and help us keep Bryn Mawr’s campus available for learning.

Going forward, please know that transparency and timely communication with our community about suspected and confirmed cases are priorities. We’ve launched an internal community health dashboard that is now available on the Parent Portal of the Bryn Mawr website. The dashboard, accessible via the Resources page, shows positive cases in the Bryn Mawr community listed by division and the number of individuals currently quarantining after learning and/or working on campus. The numbers in all columns are currently zero. We are aware of confirmed cases within our school community, but since those individuals have not potentially exposed anyone while working or learning on our campus, they are not represented on the dashboard.

Please help us keep our students and teachers as safe as possible in this challenging situation by reinforcing the importance of these four essential behaviors. As stated this summer, students and families who are unable to support the protocols will be asked to learn virtually as a necessary step to keeping the community safe.

Many thanks for your attention and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Sue Sadler
Head of School

Barbara Scott RN, BSN
Lead Nurse

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