Wednesday, January 12, 2022

Dear TPMS Families,

We are seeing an increase in positive Covid cases at our school, and we are starting to experience more classroom closures. This email will provide some more information about our decision making process as it relates to Covid.

We continue to require a 7 day quarantine for unvaccinated individuals if they are exposed to an individual with Covid or if they travel. Students and adults that are fully vaccinated do not need to quarantine after travel or exposure unless they start experiencing symptoms.

That being said, every single situation with Covid is different and there are always many factors to consider. Just yesterday we learned about a Covid exposure that affected three of our Primary classrooms. For two of those classrooms this news came about 5 days after the Covid exposure. In this situation we made the decision to have unvaccinated children in those two classrooms take rapid tests before returning to school today. This delay in notification of positive cases is likely to continue as we continue to see a shortage in rapid testing and limited capacity at testing sites.

This is such a hard time and each decision takes into account many factors that you might not be aware of. We will do our best to keep classrooms open, while also airing on the side of caution in all cases involving Covid. It’s a frustrating time, and we know that the decision to close a classroom has an immense impact on families.

Please know that the first communication you receive about a positive case of Covid will be brief. Additional information will follow if necessary. Please refrain from calling or emailing to ask questions right away. As was the case yesterday, the emails went out and then the next 4 hours were spent dealing with early releases, testing, emails, phone calls, etc. Please bear with us in these times.

Digital learning will happen if a classroom closure is more than 3 school days long. We aren’t able to provide digital learning for closures that are 1-3 days in length.

Please continue to monitor your children for symptoms and keep them home when they are sick. Upgrade your children’s mask to KN95s if you can and avoid group gatherings. It takes community effort to help stop the spread of Covid and every decision you make right now can have an impact on our entire community. It’s our intention to be as transparent as possible, so please reach out with questions.

Thank you all for your words of support and care during this challenging time, and thank you all for all the things you already do to help stop the spread of Covid! TPMS has an amazing community of people that truly care about one another 🙂