WEEKLY MESSAGE | 12.12.20

Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate the Festival of Lights!

There’s just one more week until winter break. We’re sorry to have to postpone the campus drive-through community events. The stay at home orders and dramatic rise in the number of COVID 19 cases and hospitalizations mean we need to hold off on those.

We’re so thankful Larchmont Hollygrove grandfather and infectious disease expert, Dr. Katona, was able to join us for a school-wide parent coffee on Friday morning. He spoke about a range of topics from the importance of testing, vaccination, masking, hand washing, social distancing and about outdoor activities being safer than indoor. With so much uncertainty about COVID 19, it was a great opportunity to hear clear direct communication and concrete guidance from such a knowledgeable expert in this field. The link to that coffee is included HERE and in the weekly blast.

Thank you so much to all of you who completed the REOPENING SURVEY. Please be sure to do so by Sunday night if you haven’t already. We will share out the results from the families and staff surveys next week.

For now, Larchmont’s plan remains to work toward launching our small hubs for in-person proctored distance learning for the highest need students beginning ideally in mid-January (contingent on the numbers coming down). We’re continuing to monitor the COVID 19 and public health data. We plan to reopen in our phased hybrid approach 30 days after LA County moves into the Red Tier (with a 7 day average of cases below 7 per 100,000 residents and the positivity rate below 8%). LA is currently at 41.8 new COVID-19 cases per day per 100k (26.9 adjusted case rate for tier assignment) and 8.7% positivity.

California now has the added consideration of the ICU capacity across the 5 regions needing to be above 15% (Southern California’s is currently ~10%). Our staff reopening workgroups (consolidated) will continue to meet and we’re launching a school-wide joint reopening taskforce with both staff and site council reps from each campus in the new year. We will continue to keep you updated on all efforts to get back to school.

As 2020 wraps up, we know that this year has been a challenge like no other for all. Thank you for your continued understanding and support. I am also mindful of the incredible strength of our community – the talent, dedication, flexibility and perseverance of our teachers in pivoting to distance learning, the generosity and creativity of our parent community in keeping community alive and showering our teachers/staff with appreciation, the resilience of our students for attending every day and doing their best to continue to learn and grow through this time.

I am so incredibly thankful and continually awed by this Larchmont community. Thanks so much for all you do to make our school great.

With gratitude,

Amy