Community Update: January 29, 2021
Dear ISP Community,
Great News!!! I hope this letter finds you and your families well. I have some big news to share with you: we are ready to share our official reopening dates for Elementary students! The new back-to-campus dates will be:
Grades 1 through 3 – Wednesday, February 17th
Grades 4 and 5 – Wednesday, February 24th
We will be adjusting two days from the Continuous Learning (CL) schedule so that our teachers have time to set up their classrooms and take part in mandatory health and safety training. The Childcare program will be closed early as part of the preparation process. Please see the table below for details.
We remain committed to re-opening our Elementary campus to as close to full-time as possible. While there may be some necessary adjustments to the daily schedule (most likely on Fridays), we are close to making this work.
We have been operating our Preschool and Kindergarten programs on-campus full-time for the past four months. The school’s single reported positive COVID-19 case remained within one household; it did not spread to any other community members. This experience demonstrates that – thanks to your commitment to timely reporting – adherence to strict health and sanitization protocols can effectively mitigate risk. We are confident that we can operate just as safely with our entire population back on campus, full-time.
VACCINATIONS
More great news: Vaccination eligibility opened up for school teachers and staff this week. Many of our staff and faculty were lucky enough to have either received their first dose or have already scheduled it. We hope that the majority of our staff will have received their first dose – if not both – by the time our campus re-opens in a few weeks.
Our ability to schedule vaccines, along with continually declining infection rates in our county, greatly contribute to our optimism for the future.
TRAVEL QUARANTINE
In accordance with the Multnomah County Health Department regulations, ISP requires a 14-day quarantine after non-essential travel out of state before returning to campus regardless of COVID-19 testing. For instance, if a student in Grade 3 comes back from a non-essential travel in the next two weeks, he/she will have to quarantine for 14 days before returning to campus, regardless of the official reopening date.
There will be more communications coming your way as we near our reopening dates. These will contain more details about schedules and expectations. Please be certain to read them carefully and don’t hesitate to ask questions should you have any.
Have a great weekend,
Robert