Head of School's Message: July 20

Let me start by apologizing for not having the capacity on my Zoom account to accommodate more than 100 attendees during Thursday’s call. Another parent Q + A has been scheduled for tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. to cover the same ground we covered on Thursday. Since the school year ended Chandler’s administrative team and board of trustees has been working to dot every “i” and cross every “t” as we prepare for the new school year. That was a detail I missed, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience and frustration that it caused. 

 

Los Angeles County issued a new Health Officer Order today to adhere to the California Department of Public Health’s directive that schools in 32 counties on the State’s monitoring list, including Los Angeles County, cannot resume in-person learning next month. Pasadena follows the directive from LA County. Pasadena can tighten LA County’s directives, but it cannot relax them.

 

“While it is disheartening and unfortunate that Los Angeles County students can’t plan for a normal first day back at school, we respect the Governor’s decision to insist that counties reduce the rate of community transmission before schools re-open for in-person classroom learning,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “This week, Los Angeles County has unfortunately reached grim milestones every day. We have reported the most cases in a single day, the most hospitalizations and tragically high death numbers. If we work together to do what is needed to slow the spread of the virus, this will help protect our children, our teachers and the many people who make a school function and who educate our children. I know this is difficult news for the children and families of Los Angeles County, and we will need to work together as a county to support quality distance learning opportunities for families and all children until students can get back to in-person instruction at their schools. The Governor has made it clear that the path to re-opening schools is to get back to flattening the curve so that we can resume our recovery journey.”

 

In order for schools to re-open their campuses, Los Angeles County will have to remain off the monitoring list for 14 consecutive days. Counties are on the monitoring list because they have not achieved more than 150 tests per day per 100,000 people, or have more than 100 cases per 1,000 residents, or have case positivity rates greater than 8%, or have a 10% or more increase in hospitalizations over the past three days, or less than 20% of ICU beds are open, or less than 25% of ventilators are available.

 

At this time, Los Angeles County is on the monitoring list because it has a positivity rate of 9% and a case rate of 307 positive cases per 100,000 residents. However, testing and hospital capacity remain adequate, with almost 20,000 people tested daily. Both ICU bed and ventilator capacity remain adequate, with 29% of ICU beds open and 64% of ventilator capacity available.

 

Health departments are well aware of data from around the world, showing that children are far less likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus than adults. But as the New York Times reported last week, there are significant unanswered questions, including how often children become infected and what role they play in transmitting the virus. Some research suggests younger children are less likely to infect other people than teenagers are, which would make opening elementary schools (K-5) less risky than high schools, but the evidence is not conclusive. Some scientists say that younger children are less likely to have Covid-19 symptoms like coughs and less likely to have strong speaking voices, both of which can transmit the virus in droplets. Other researchers are examining whether proteins that enable the virus to enter lung cells and replicate them are less abundant in children, limiting the severity of their infection and potentially their ability to transmit the virus.

 

Once Pasadena’s Health Department allows re-opening, we will transition to in-person instruction. We know there are Chandler families who may choose to keep their children home. We have plans to accommodate those families remotely.

 

In this Cloverleaf, Lower School Director Emily Brown and Middle School Director Jill Bergeron will let you know about some of the changes to expect when in-person learning resumes. When the school closed in March, the remote learning program, Chandler-at-Home, was launched in three days. With ten weeks of distance learning experience, helped by the feedback we received from a parent survey, and with six weeks before the start of the new school year, Chandler faculty and administrators are working on an updated version of a program that we will be using at the beginning of the year, but hopefully not for too long.