WEEKLY MESSAGE | 12.5.20

Hi all,

I hope you’re doing well and that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break! Winter break is only a couple of weeks away.

I wanted to update you on the reopening planning work and the latest COVID information. As you all know, tragically, there have been record-breaking numbers of new COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths locally and nationally. The City, County, and State just issued new public health orders this week. Larchmont continues to actively plan and prepare to be able to reopen once the public health metrics permit.

As you all know, we began in-person one on one special education assessments earlier this fall and in gaining County permission to do that, we also have permission to launch our small hubs to support our highest need students in person. We had been aiming to do that before winter break but are holding off until mid-January at the earliest given this recent surge. For broader reopening, we will follow the state tier system and once LA County moves into and stays in the Red Tier (cases below 7 per 100,000 residents and positivity below 8%) for one month we’ll plan to reopen. We can’t know when that will be.

We know it’s frustrating that this pandemic is going on so long and we thank you for your patience and support as we navigate this together. In order for us to ensure we are ready and prepared to reopen when the time comes, we’ll be sending out an important reopening planning survey. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. Since the COVID and public health information is so dynamic we will be surveying the community more often to ensure we’ve got an accurate, up to the minute pulse on our community’s thinking to help inform planning.

We’re also launching a school-wide reopening taskforce in January with parent site council reps from each campus and staff reps from our reopening workgroups and/or our employee advisory group. This task force will connect every other week to look at the most recent public health data, help vet and refine plans and communications to prepare students, parents and staff for the reopening procedures.

Thank you so much for all you do. We’re a strong community and though I know these times are hard, we’ll get through them together.

Warmly,

Amy