September 23, 2021
from Dr. Bill Hudson, Head of School
It always seems as though the battery on my cell phone is running low. Maybe it’s because I have an older model, or often forget to close apps and plug it in. It is probably the combination of all those factors, although I often blame it on Waze, a crowd-sourced GPS traffic app I use every day that requires a great deal of power to operate.
I think we can all agree that the last 18 months of the pandemic have drained our collective batteries. COVID-19 has been like the Waze app—always open, always draining, hard to close down. Similarly, political discord, social unrest, racial tension, and climate events have also acted like apps that are constantly open and continually draining our reserve. My kids chastise me to close out my apps when I am done using them. (I wish they would do the same with their dirty dishes!) I have decided to follow their advice. Instead of allowing the pandemic to dominate my home screen, it will become just one of many apps on my phone. We must take COVID-19 very seriously, to be sure, but we must also move forward.
That said, our priority is to be on-campus for in-person learning all year. While we are carrying forward many lessons learned during the pandemic, we know how important it is for students to bring their whole selves to school each day. The Minnesota Department of Health (and all available public health guidance) agrees that the benefits of being physically present in school are significant and creating conditions that help safeguard in-person instruction is a priority.
We’ve designed our plan with the MPA mission in mind. Not only are we committed to keeping in-person learning available to students, but we know that preventing on-campus spread may help to reduce the amount of community spread within the Twin Cities. We want to “do right” by doing our part. Layered mitigation remains our shared responsibility: symptom monitoring, prompt reporting of symptoms and exposure, minimizing gatherings and travel, and higher risk activities (particularly for the unvaccinated) in addition to masking, hygiene practices, enhanced ventilation, onsite testing, and the variety of other strategies we have successfully employed during our COVID response.
Thanks to our shared commitment to all of our recommendations and guidelines, we’ve been able to not only have students be in person and learning with their teachers and classmates, but they’re experiencing all that an MPA education has to offer including safe athletics, robust support services, continuity of theatre classes and curriculum, resumed music education, clubs and activities, and a return to many on campus events.
We should celebrate our community’s commitment to vaccinations: 97% of eligible students and 98% of eligible adults have been fully vaccinated. Once vaccines become available for younger ages, which may be much sooner than we thought, we strongly urge parents to seek vaccines for those under 12 as well. When that occurs, we look forward to relaxing a number of protocols that are currently in place.
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