I write to share with you that the Board of Trustees has authorized CA school leadership to move toward a gradual reopening of campus for boarders and day students for safety-driven, in-person learning in STAC2. This decision follows the invaluable feedback from students and families about all-remote learning, the substantive work of the Safe Return to Concord Academy (SRCA) advisory committee and its sub-committees, the success of current in-person campus activities, and the critically important ways that our faculty and staff’s input have informed our reopening plans. We have confidence that sufficient strides with facilities changes, arrangements for testing, and Concord-area virus management thus far allow CA to open safely.
Next week, we will begin sharing specific details of our reopening plans with you via email, and will provide subsequent virtual town halls to discuss those. We also want to be responsive to the many questions that cannot help but arise around reopening amid this pandemic, and next week will begin posting an extensive set of related FAQs on the Healthy Concord website. We will continue adding to those in order to address your questions and concerns, so that you have a clear resource to turn to for information about the reopening process and plans.
All plans are contingent on the state of the pandemic, most notably continued confidence that CA can operate safely. We also want to stress that our plans are being designed not only to open CA for in-person learning, but also to have the best chance to stay open. And, at the same time, our planning is accounting for developments that could make it necessary to return to all-remote learning—a decision of course we hope not to have to make but which we must be prepared to make if conditions necessitate it.
Much more information, with specific plans, is coming starting next week, and we pledge to keep you informed fully and regularly in the days and weeks ahead. As we move forward with reopening plans, we continue to welcome your thoughts or questions at healthyconcord@concordacademy.org.
Sincerely,
Rick Hardy Head of School Dresden Endowed Chair
