Dear Burgundy Community,

We are issuing our start of school Covid–19 protocols. The Covid–19 Management Plan has been developed after reviewing the latest global guidance and having consulted with our Burgundy medical advisory group. While it’s frustrating for all of us to enter yet another school year so focused on a global pandemic, the reality is that we had a very good year last year, we know how to do what we have to do, and we’re prepared to offer more of our regular program, even from the start, and to tighten and relax protocols as the situation requires. We’re hopeful that by later in the school year we will be moving closer to putting the pandemic behind us!!

Our guiding highest priorities remain:

  1. Keeping our children and our community as safe and healthy as possible.
  2. Maintaining on-campus learning.

We accomplished these goals through the 2020-21 school year and summer programs with the highest success. Yet, as we wind up to start this new school year, we’re appropriately alert to the numbers regionally and nationally and concerned that the pandemic continues and our unvaccinated children are vulnerable.

While the number of children sickened by Covid–19 remains rather low, children’s hospitals are seeing upticks in child cases of Covid–19, including a very few very serious cases in otherwise healthy children. Furthermore, even with booster shots for vaccinated age 12+ and vaccinations for 4-11 year-olds potentially available sometime later this year, transmission among vaccinated persons is occurring at rates far beyond what was originally forecasted. The headline takeaway: This is no time to relax, unfortunately. That means, at least in the near run, some additional sacrifice and willingness are needed, for the greater good, to take greater precautions around higher risk activities off-campus, particularly around travel, sports and activities, and social gatherings.

As you review the updated protocols you will see that we are introducing greater flexibility in some of our protocols. This will require strong collaboration. The goal is to encourage responsible decision-making within a reasonable framework of risk management. We want to help students and employees remain on campus as much as possible and minimize or even prevent removal for quarantine or isolation. Where possible, going forward, we will seek less to govern off-campus lives than to advise and support thoughtful decisions that avert outbreaks that can put individuals at risk and send cohorts (or the whole school) back into remote learning. In exchange, we will ask employees and families to be transparent and thoughtful about the potential impacts of their decision-making. We reserve the right to request or require either testing, including weekly testing, or a period of isolation or quarantine relating to particular activities.

Finally, as we have said, our protocols and levels of mitigation this year will likely adjust with an increase or decrease in regional metrics. But we can not forecast what will be necessary for winter and spring — or even Thanksgiving. We have to continue to respond to circumstances as they develop. Over time, however, we expect that with continued due care, we will see the other side of this pandemic!

Please review our COVID–19 Management Plan carefully. Access to this information will live on the COVID–19 Resource page on the website. Updates to this plan will be shared via Constant Comment and posted to the website as needed.