Dear Walden Families,
I hope this message finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy on this warm July day. At Walden, campus renovation projects are in full swing, we are hosting a new family event this evening, and the Walden@Home Summer Camp is ready to begin on Monday.
My family and I are currently off the grid for five days to recharge and recalibrate; however, I wanted to reach out to address Governor Newsom's announcement regarding school-opening guidelines yesterday. According to these new guidelines, a school may open for in-person instruction when its county has been off the California Monitoring List for 14 consecutive days.
From the onset of the pandemic, Walden has had the benefit and resource of association partnerships like the California Association of Independent Schools, National Association of Independent Schools, and peer schools in the Pasadena area independent school network to support our understanding of conflicting guidelines and develop our re-opening plans. We also do not have to wrestle with the same complexities of a larger school district and have the ability to keep student learning at the center of our planning, while remaining nimble in our approach.
With many schools scheduled to begin their academic years in mid-August, it is timely to issue universal reopening guidelines to address the safe opening of public and private schools across California at this time. Teachers and administrators across the country need to follow a similar protocol to begin to address what has been identified as the "universal priority" of helping all children return to on-campus learning safely.
Walden's first day of school on September 10 is still eight weeks away, and we remain mindful that the circumstances are in a state of near constant fluctuation. The health and safety of our community, including students, faculty, and staff, remains of paramount concern; as does our commitment to ensuring a robust, equitable learning experience for all Walden students. Having been intimately engaged with planning during this pandemic for the past five months, I can confidently say that the circumstances can change in the upcoming weeks, particularly for a small independent elementary school like ours. On the best days, I have come to embrace the frustration that comes with this uncertainty. Please know that we deeply understand the disruption and challenge this uncertainty presents for our families. I can assure you, as we have demonstrated throughout the spring, that Walden will remain responsive as we move forward. At this point, we continue to strive for the ideal scenario of returning to campus full-time for families who choose to do so, while maintaining careful attention to the guidelines provided to us by state and local authorities. Full-time virtual instruction through the Walden@Home model will also be available for families who indicated their preference for this format in our return-to-school survey.
In the coming weeks, we will release our full return-to-school plan as well as student cohort configurations for the in-person and remote instruction models we are building. We will also host a few virtual conversations about the upcoming year in August, and plan to make a final decision about our return in mid-August. For now, I encourage us all collectively to continue to do our part to flatten the curve. Please wear a mask, keep physically distant, wash your hands frequently, avoid large gatherings, and please self-quarantine if you believe you or a family member might have been exposed to the virus.
With care, Terra
Head of School Walden School
"Be true to your work, your word, your friend." ~Henry David Thoreau |