Winter 2021 Parent Meeting & FAQ

We anticipate that grades, comments, and transcripts will look similar to the fall, including letter grades and in-depth comments discussing what topics were covered and your student’s performance.

We will be scheduling a Virtual Parents’ Weekend near the conclusion of the Winter Term, allowing parents to get direct feedback from their student’s teachers about progress and any challenges. The format and schedule for this is still being finalized, as we will build on and learn from our experiences this past spring and fall. 

Yes. While we acknowledge that our focus on safety (as seen in our mealtime schedule and our adjustment of sections, etc.) has caused us to be creative with class format, times, and meetings, we as a faculty have worked together to prioritize and focus our efforts to ensure that our students are prepared for their next step in the fall. 

The pandemic has provided a unique opportunity, forcing us to be creative and think differently about academic time and what types of schedules work best for different students and different subject areas. We will be applying these lessons opportunistically as we plan for any future academic schedule when we go back to “normal”, hopefully, this coming fall. 

We will continue to have regular team practices during the week, with additional skill-development practices and/or intramural games on the weekends. Similar to the fall, there will be opportunities to compete on an intramural basis, but we will likely not be competing against other teams this winter. The winter athletics season will run slightly longer than usual before transitioning to spring athletics in mid-March.

We will be transitioning to spring sports in March based on the weather and the availability of facilities and fields for practices. It has not yet been determined if we will be able to compete against other schools in spring sports. This decision will be made based on the emerging situation in our area, again with the safety of our students, coaches, and community as our highest priority.

To the extent possible, we are asking everyone to arrive in the indicated window to help us manage the incredible logistics associated with keeping individual students and our community safe and healthy. That said, we understand that we cannot control what we cannot control, and we will work with you to get students safely to campus.

Please be in touch with Erzi Willems, our travel coordinator, who can help with travel logistics. Ms. Willems can be reached by email at ewillems@cardigan.org.

After we have successfully re-established our “bubble” here on campus, we are planning to start on-campus parent visits in February. Visits will likely occur in the Surge Center and/or the lower level of Stoddard. As in the fall, parents will need to reach out to Student Life in advance and answer screening questions immediately prior to their visit. Further protocols will be published. 

At this time, we do not anticipate that parents will be able to take their children off campus this winter. After much consideration and discussion, we frankly do not see a way to maintain the safety of our larger campus program while managing the logistics of the required re-entry quarantine. We are further concerned that circumstances could change while students are away, which could keep students from returning to campus to complete their year. We will continue to monitor the situation, and may make adjustments this spring.

Our secondary school counseling office is very aware of the importance of these visits, and will be working with individual secondary schools to understand their plans and work with them to include our students. This will likely be done virtually.

Commencement is currently scheduled for Sunday, May 16, 2021. We are currently developing plans and will share details as soon as possible.

We have not yet finalized all of the details relevant to the end of the year, but will be doing so shortly. It is our expectation that grade 6-8 students will depart campus during the week before May 16, 2021. We also understand that some international students may be affected by travel rules returning to their home country. Students will not be penalized academically for following required state and national protocols and requirements.

The physical and emotional health of our boys is the primary concern in all we do. Our calendar and schedule for the remainder of the school year have been created with exactly that in mind - i.e., we are not proceeding as “normal”, because what we face is far from “normal”.

To that end, we will be creating and providing opportunities for advisory groups to meet, for community events, for a balanced schedule of academics and athletics, and for time for rest and reflection. We will make adjustments as needed as we move along in this challenging year, and welcome feedback and concerns about any individual students as we proceed. 

That said, we remain committed to doing all we can to maintain our on-campus program, and are reluctant to vary too widely from the protocols we established in the fall, which worked and served our community and students well.

Our focus right now is to be as efficient and safe as possible in getting students through the serving line for every meal. As such, unfortunately, we’ve had to make compromises in the number of choices we make available, as well as how we package our meals. 

Anecdotally, we have received good feedback from students and adults about our work to date, and would absolutely be open to feedback and suggestions through our Director of Dining Services, Joe Hines.

This is still being finalized, but our work is guided by (1) constructing meaningful and engaging activities for the boys; and (2) providing consistent choice across weekends, allowing students to decide how they want to spend their time and providing an opportunity to build on their work over the term.

A team of faculty across duty teams will help plan activities in a variety of areas: winter sports skills training, spring sports skills training, outdoor adventure, arts and creativity, community service, and academic enrichment. These activities will be announced in advance of every weekend and students will be able to sign up for one or two activities within the Saturday morning block (depending on what they choose). 

We intentionally scheduled a seven-day window prior to your student’s return to campus to account for a delay in receiving results. We feel that this test is very important. If there are challenges in meeting this deadline, please contact Karen Gray directly at kgray@cardigan.org.

Yes, all students on campus will conclude the quarantine period at the same time after we receive all the 2nd test results back from DHMC.

The dormitories vary in the HVAC systems installed. Where possible, we will be using the full extent of the systems’ capabilities to promote the maximum fresh air circulation. Our facilities/ & housekeeping and health center staff have devised plans to clean and disinfect common areas frequently using CDC-approved materials. Different shared areas are cleaned on different schedules, but there is a clear protocol in place for all dormitories, classroom buildings, and program facilities. 

This fall, we did a thorough survey of our facilities’ air handling systems. We found that there were a variety of different systems, from brand-new, state-of-the-art HVAC systems that we can equip with appropriate filters quickly and easily and some that will require different, more localized approaches.

Wherever possible (e.g., Wallach, Commons), we have installed MERV-13 filters in the systems themselves and have increased air flow from outside to maximize fresh air and the number of air exchanges/hour within the building.

Where this is not possible in our classroom buildings, we are installing wall-mounted air purifiers and sanitizers. These use a variety of technologies (including filtering and UVC light) to clean the air in the space.

• Masks have been demonstrated to work to protect both the person wearing them and those around them, and we believe in them as one tool among many to help protect our community. 
• In the fall, our approach was to wear masks whenever in public spaces, and when we were in transit between activities. This translated to wearing masks most of the time except in dormitories with our “pods”, in classrooms when seated, while actively eating in the dining hall, and during sports activities. We were trying to find the appropriate balance between safety and the ability of our boys to wear masks responsibly on a constant basis. 
• During quarantine period, students should be wearing masks everywhere except while eating and in their dorm room.
• During winter time, we will be enforcing more strict use during athletics (in locker rooms, walking to/from practice, and on sidelines) and during classes (in classrooms until are seated in assigned seats). Students will be able to take off their masks while in the dorm, while eating, when directly engaged in athletic activities, and when seated in classrooms. 
• Students must have masks that fit – please no buffs or gaters.
• Our decision around mask-wearing both now and into the winter/spring session will be governed by the situation in the region and in our school. Were the situation in our region of New Hampshire to dramatically worsen or if there was an active case on our campus, for instance, we would likely move to enforce even more mask-wearing.

It is our expectation that the vaccine will likely not be available to students under age 16 prior to the end of the school year, and perhaps not before the beginning of the fall session. The emergency use approval for the current set of vaccines does not apply to those under 16, as thorough safety testing and review has not yet been conducted. 

We are watching this issue carefully alongside other public and independent K-12 school as we look to understand the availability, safety, and efficacy of the vaccine in the US and around the world for school-age children.

We are also actively evaluating how we can support our adult community in getting vaccinated as soon as possible to help limit their personal risk, and the risks to our community as a whole.

We have been very pleased with our relationship with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock lab, which has been consistently providing feedback about asymptomatic and symptomatic testing within 24 hours. We will continue to use DHMC for our asymptomatic testing needs (such as rebuilding our “bubble” after winter break). 

We are also pleased to announce that over the winter break, Mascoma Community Health Center received a quick-test machine. This machine performs PCR-based tests, and will be used if anyone on campus shows symptoms, allowing us to quickly know if the person is suffering from COVID or flu and react immediately based on that information to isolate and treat the individual and limit any community spread.

We are considering other forms of quick-tests which may be employed to help us mitigate risks to the community. To that end, we are exploring the possibility of weekly and less intrusive tests for day students (provided for free by the state through Mascoma Community Health Center).