3/12/20 Additional Info:
The Bishop has closed all Methodist churches in D.C. starting this afternoon in order to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. So Metropolitan Nursery School would have been closing today anyway due to building closure. I hope the earlier decision gave families a few more hours to plan and prepare for extended time at home.
Over the next week the school and teachers plan to send out tips and activities to do at home with your children and hopefully all these days at home will be remembered as a fun staycation by our children when they are older. While we have been talking about hand-washing and the superhero power to kill germs, we have not been talking to them about coronavirus, and many of them will see this as an extended Spring Break. Try to allow them that impression. Or, if they ask about it, here is a good article on talking to your children about the coronavirus and here is an article for adults about facts your children may want to know.
I want to take a moment to also encourage families to truly participate in social distancing. While the virus is likely to be mild for most of our populations, keeping your children away from others may actually save someone else's life. We know too well how easy it is for them to appear healthy, while still carrying a virus or bacteria to spread. Here is an Atlantic article on why places like Metropolitan, and the NBA(!) are making the decisions they are making now and why social distancing works.
While it is never easy for schools to close, these closures WILL save lives. Please do your part by helping your children practice good hygiene, social distancing, and avoiding higher risk populations (60+ and those with underlying health conditions).
You'll keep hearing from me over the weeks ahead. In the meantime, here are two songs we learned about handwashing. This one was taught to us by our Bee friend, Amelia (my apologies for mixing up some of her original lyrics and for my scratchy voice...it's been a long week!).
3/12/20 Update:
With support from the Advisory Committee, the staff, and the church, Metropolitan Nursery School will be closed due to the novel coronavirus beginning at 3 pm today through at least the end of our Spring Break (March 27th).
Over the next week, our teachers will send out ideas about activities to do with your children during their extended time home.
I was hoping to stay open as long as possible, but despite the increased cleaning and sanitizing and enhanced exclusion criteria on our sick policy, we have still had an outbreak of strep in one of our classes this week. It is clear that it is nearly impossible to prevent the spread of illness in our school population, given their age. With that in mind, being proactive in practicing social distancing by closing our school before the novel coronavirus becomes more widespread is the best way to keep our population from contributing to the spread of the virus.
I do not make this decision lightly, but after seeing a first-hand example this week of illness exploding in our school despite extra precautions, it is not a risk I am comfortable taking with our staff, students, families, or community. I know this will be a hardship for our families and appreciate your understanding of the unique circumstances in which we find ourselves.
3/11/20 Update:
What are we doing to combat the spread of illness:
We are asking parents to keep sick children home and we are erring on the side of caution with our exclusion criteria. If we call to say your child seems unwell, you will need to pick them up.
We have removed the step stool from the hallway water fountain (while it is sanitized every morning, it is just better not to use it at this time).
In addition to cleaning and sanitizing throughout the school day as needed, we are sanitizing all high contact classroom surfaces in the afternoon once children leave, and in the hallways in every morning.
We are having children wash their hands with soap and water several times a day and are learning multiple hand-washing songs to go with that (Amelia just taught all the children a new one today).
There is more guidance from the CDC that you can reference as we progress through this illness. Including this handout on how to keep the school safe.
I understand that there is a lot of worry at this time, so I will do my best to be proactive in our communication and decision-making to keep our population healthy. However, the only way to guarantee you don’t come into contact with any germs is for everyone who lives in your home to stay at home. Families have varying degrees of the level of risk for germs that they are able to accept (families with elderly or sick people in the home may already be isolating themselves in order to protect themselves from illness). If you want to ensure your child does not catch anything, please keep them home. As parents, it is your job to make decisions that feel comfortable and safe for your family. If you decide to keep your child home at this time, we understand. If you do decide to do that, please think carefully about the activities you do, if you are taking them out around people during the day, then they might as well be in school. I think if you are keeping them home for safety, they should have some cozy days at home (or at least not around people).
There is not a confirmed case of covid-19 in our community however, we have reports of strep in 3 classrooms (the Fireflies, Butterflies and Ladybugs), we have a couple cases of pink-eye in the Butterflies and, of course, flu, cold, and allergies are all still par for the course this time of year. If you think your child is sick, please keep them home. I am going to try and stay open as long as I feel I can keep the children and staff healthy (which is always hard to do in a preschool). Part of being able to do that is trusting that we all have buy-in to the process. While every sniffle and sneeze may not require a trip to the doctor’s office, keeping your child home shows the community that you are invested in keeping it healthy. So thank you for being cautious this week. I know it means our numbers are down, but it also means we are able to stay open, because it means I can keep the remaining teachers healthy. This gets us to our discussion on how I will decide if we need to close:
We always follow the recommendation of the D.C. Department of Health, our licensing body, OSSE, and the local school districts around us. If we are told we need to close, or if DCPS or MCPS close, we will also need to close.
We are housed in a large church, if our greater church community or school community has a confirmed case of Covid-19, we will also need to close for a period of time to receive guidance from the Department of Health on how to keep our community safe and what steps we would need to follow to re-open.
If I can not get enough staff in to maintain safe ratios of students to teachers we will also need to close.
If it becomes necessary to isolate our community because of documented community spread nearby.
3/8/20 Update:
As you may have heard, the Rector at Christ Church in Georgetown is the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the district. If you attended services last Sunday, or last week, I believe they are asking people to call their physicians for guidance. If that applies to your family, please call your doctor for guidance before sending your child to school. Read below to see our expanded exclusion criteria for determining if it is ok to send your child to school and thank you for your understanding during this time of erring on the side of caution with possible illnesses.
3/7/20 Update:
In order to continue adapting and responding to Covid-19 as it continues to spread, the current community goal is containment in order to slow the spread of the virus and PROTECT HIGHER RISK POPULATIONS (which for this virus appear to be older and immunocompromised people). We will continue to look to the CDC and DC Department of Health for guidance as well as monitoring our families and neighborhood (we will also keep a close eye on AU’s response). In addition to the added precautions for cleaning and sanitizing and working with the children to learn good hand washing techniques, we will be adopting additional exclusions criteria in the weeks ahead and if your child is excluded from school due to symptoms, please try to keep them at home to avoid spreading their germs to the community.
New Exclusion Criteria for determining if your child is able to come to school: If your child comes to school with respiratory symptoms, especially if they can not manage their fluids, we will call you to pick them up. We appreciate keeping your children with uncontrollable runny noses, sneezing or coughing home until their symptoms subside.
Complicating matters is that allergy symptom is here, thanks to the warmth and early Spring buds. If your child suffers from seasonal allergies, please consider starting any regular antihistamine treatment at this time (of course, consult your pediatrician for medical advice). That way the antihistamine can start doing its work for our seasonal allergy sufferers.
Our children are simply unable to manage their own bodily fluids. Part of the “work” in preschool is learning how to use a tissue to wipe their nose, how to cough and sneeze into a tissue, and how to wash their hands correctly. Unfortunately, that makes an outbreak like this trickier to manage for our population. Below is an example (use with permission, of course) of what “managing” their bodily fluids looks like in preschool.
A two year old’s nose wiping ability as illustrated through paint.
3/1/20 Update: As of right now, we do not have an issue in our area and have been instructed by the Department of Health and the CDC to continue business as usual, but to begin preparing our plan for our virus response. Last week we replenished our supplies of cleaning products, gloves, paper towels, etc. and we started the additional step of sanitizing high contact surfaces at the very end of the day after the cleaning staff has been through each room. I want to reassure everyone that we are in contact with area health agencies and with other private schools and will, as always, be quick to make decisions that keep our community healthy.
I will post updates here as well as articles I find useful:
An Op-Ed from the Post for Tips on How We Can Help Children Increase Their Sense of Control as the Coronavirus Approaces.
Tips to keep children and school healthy.
There are a few things we should all consider doing during this time to encourage overall health and wellness:
WASH YOUR HANDS and teach your children how to correctly wash their hands often. We do this at school, but lessons repeated at home and school are the quickest to be learned.
Consider greetings that don’t involve hand-shaking or kissing. I am going to do my best to move towards an elbow bump…this is easier said than done, but if we all try, it will be easier to remember to avoid touching hands during greetings. This is especially important for those of us with young children at home or who work in schools. Obviously, we cannot stop holding hands with the children, so it is even more important that we do a good job washing our hands and avoiding spreading this to older populations.
Please don’t let your children be exposed to too much of the news or adult conversations about the virus. In general, our youngest children should be shielded from the anxiety that the 24-hour news cycle can produce (this is true for adults as well).
Continue reporting illnesses and symptoms to the office. This ensures that when something is going around our community we can alert people with any high risks groups at home (luckily, young children do not seem to be at great risk with the virus, as they are showing little to no symptoms).
I am not changing our exclusion policy at this time, however, please keep in mind that 2-4 year-olds are not good at managing their symptoms and bodily fluid. If your child is coughing and sneezing regularly, we may ask you to keep them home until their symptoms are manageable.
And finally, don’t panic. By all accounts this is a mild virus for most populations, and it is not prevalent in our area yet. Staying healthy also includes eating well, and getting good sleep. If we become too anxious to relax, rest and take care of ourselves we will be more likely to get sick with any number of illnesses. So please remember to take care of yourself by eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough sleep.