News
Important Back to School Update
Dear Families,
We’d like to express our utmost gratitude to our King’s School Health Office staff, for their incredible handling of all the new challenges and health issues they encounter each day. They truly love our school and your kids, and we simply couldn’t find a finer team of nurses to see us through this difficult time.
Kristy Fischer ~ Evie Lucia ~ Michelle Hodges ~ Erica Livingston
Also, we are overwhelmed by the support and expert advice of our team of doctors, who are on the front lines of the epidemic from multiple perspectives, and who meet weekly with our School Management Team to help us make safe and wise decisions for our school. Our docs are also three King’s ‘dads’, so they are invested and care very deeply for our community.
Dr Girling ~ Dr Leonard ~ Dr Quaresima
Our Goals As a School This Year:
- To glorify God through our attitudes of grace, peace, and kindness to all, as we show our children what true Christianity looks like in a dark world
- To do our best to provide an excellent educational experience to our kids, while keeping their spiritual, emotional, and social needs in mind and heart
- To transition smoothly between facilitating our At-Home students and our In-Class students
- To ensure everyone is safe and healthy through frequent prayers, sanitizing, masking, plexi-dividers, teacher/student zones, visual and audible reminders, all while honoring state guidelines
- To keep as many pods open as possible in order that the most effective teaching through IN-PERSON instruction may continue
IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR IN-PERSON SCHOOLING
With rapidly rising numbers in positive COVID cases in our surrounding communities, we have decided that for the immediate time being, we are implementing universal masking for all staff and for all students in grades 5-12, beginning whenever we return to school, which at this point is Feb 1, 2021, in order to continue to meet our goals expressed above. This means that all staff (teachers, support staff, office staff) are to wear masks all day. Students in grades 5-12 will also wear masks all day, even when sitting at their desks and maintaining social distancing. Students may remove masks to eat, while remaining socially distanced. We are also highly recommending that all students in Kindergarten through 4th grade remain masked all day, but we understand the nature of their ages and learning styles will make that more difficult. At this point, our focus is on the older students and adults, as CDC has reported that statistically it is this age group typically spreading the virus and that are more at risk for severe complications.
Here is the link to more specific information about the 10-20 age group.
We will revisit our decision to universally mask every two weeks and adjust according to the number of cases in our area, accompanied by the advice of our medical teams. We hope soon to be able to revert back to being unmasked when socially distanced. But right now, our medical professionals strongly admonish this extra precaution while our area is experiencing this rise in COVID cases.
Right now, COVID in our surrounding communities looked very different than it did at the onset of this school year. So, we believe at this time, hopefully for a short time, it is necessary to implement this change. We know that wearing a mask all day is a challenge. But we can do it.
Our health experts have also explained to us that much of the spread is statistically happening by community contact and social events outside of school at which people are unmasked. By implementing universal masking at this time, we are doing our part to keep our school and community as healthy and safe as possible.
We are encouraged that the county Department of Health has told us we are doing a very good job at King’s. They applaud our pod system and our daily quick-cleans!
If you are interested in learning more about the process of how we report to the Department of Health, and how they correspond with exposures and COVID cases, we can provide you with that information by request.
We will continue to update you every few weeks. Check your email and Facebook to stay connected. Also, in the event that we need to close a pod (or two) at short notice, we will alert you via email, Facebook, and website. Please be sure you are checking your email every day.
Take every moment as an opportunity to honor God and attract unbelievers to a life lived in Christ.
Sincerely, Mrs. Girling and the School Management Team