Dear Families,  

In advance of the upcoming holiday season, we wanted to share our community’s expectations and guidelines for gatherings and for returning to school following these holiday breaks. During this time, we strongly encourage you to minimize indoor group gatherings and hosting and limit travel. Exposure to and transmission of Covid is incredibly disruptive to your family and your child’s learning, and puts all in our community at greater risk. 

At the same time, we know that during Thanksgiving and winter break, some limited gathering, hosting, and travel may be planned. Currently, all children enrolled in the Children’s Center are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. That means we must take special precautions to minimize risk. By attending a gathering, hosting, or traveling, you have added responsibility to take extra steps to mitigate risk, not only for your own family, but for our entire community. 

If you choose to gather with family or friends, please take the following precautions as a risk mitigation strategy:

1. If you plan to mix households indoors without masks, test the entire group first. Keep your gathering small, and limit the number of others who, like your child, are unvaccinated. 
2. After your child has mixed households, monitor closely for symptoms for 14 days after the event, regardless of vaccination status.  
3. After your child has traveled, monitor closely for symptoms for 14 days after the event, regardless of vaccination status.  
4. If anyone in your household or a member of your holiday gathering group becomes symptomatic or tests positive for Covid, notify TBS immediately. 

If your holiday celebration will not meet all of these criteria or if you unexpectedly find your child has not followed all of the risk mitigation strategies above, please let us know. In this situation, we will ask that you have your child stay home and get tested on Day 5, or later, after your holiday gathering or upon your return from travel. With a negative test and no symptoms, your child may return to school. We know that this adds another layer of complexity to your holiday plans, and we appreciate the dedication of each family to keeping the entire community healthy.

We know testing can be difficult to find. Given this, TBS has ordered a large shipment of BinaxNow two-pack home test kits, which we expect to arrive on December 10. We are passing them along to you at cost, which is $20 per pack. If you need some, please order them here: BinaxNow Order Form

As an additional mitigation strategy, in the weeks following Thanksgiving, and again after the New Year, we will increase our routine surveillance testing at TBS. This allows us to closely monitor our community’s health at a time when risk may increase. 

Finally, we will host two optional drive-through testing events:

• After Thanksgiving: Sunday, November 28 from 3-5 pm Sign up here
• After winter break: Sunday, January 2 from 3-5 pm Sign up here

TBS Children's Center and Mayim Tamid children and staff will be tested at no cost. We can also test family members and family caregivers for $10 each. 

Thank you for going the extra mile to keep our community safe. 

Ellen