Dear Parents,

Our reentry plan

We have been communicating with you quite a bit this summer, so I believe you already know that we have had a Reentry Task Force working since the spring, looking at all of the possible ways we might return to school. Last week, the Governor and the New York State Department of Education released their guidance, and set a deadline for all New York schools to file plans for in-person, remote, and hybrid learning plans by July 31.

Those, happily, are the exact plans we’ve been contemplating and working on. Does this give us a big head-start, like that insufferable kid from college who always finished papers a week ahead of the deadline?! Sadly, no: the specifics that the state is asking for are complex, detailed, and they gave us two weeks. What follows is a very short version of our plan; a longer, more detailed plan will be filed with the state and available to our community quite soon:

I have written this in a somewhat simplified, bite-sized form; again, the detailed plan is taking shape in a long and precise manner. Our approach is conservative and safety-first, and it won’t be entirely fun to wear masks, socially distance, and wash up as much as we’re intending. But it will be worth it: being together, in-person, confers enormous educational value. If being careful and conservative in the extreme allows us to do that, the effort will be well justified.

Our plans are all being developed in consultation with CDC, NY State and Monroe County guidelines and our own Health Advisory Board. Speaking of which, we have added a new member, David Garrison, MD, who is currently an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC). He serves as Medical Director of Inpatient Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Medical Director of C/A Mobile Crisis Team. It is wonderful to have his expertise added to our deep bench! We are also developing plans for remote and hybrid learning, assuming they are needed.

Harley can do this because of the strength of the community, the expertise of our Health Advisory Board, our intentional smallness and low student-teacher ratio, what we’re learning with summer programs, and the strong, clear-minded work of the Rochester health community.

Best,

Larry Frye

Head of School