Dear ACS Families,

I hope you and your families are staying healthy and well. I am writing this letter to give you the following updates.

First, I would like to announce a calendar change.   We have decided that January 25 will be a normal school day, not an early release day for professional development. 

Second, the ACS Learning Team met on Tuesday to discuss how the return to school is going and what supports we need to put in place for students over the next month or so.  We are confident we may already be at the peak of the Omicron variant spread and are hopeful that the number of new Covid cases will begin to decline sharply next week.  This has also been affirmed by the Minister of Health.

We are monitoring student and faculty attendance this week and the numbers are moving in the right direction.  We started the week with 27.5% of students and 10.9% of faculty absent.  Those numbers have been declining each day.  Today, We are not seeing additional community spread.  Rather, the people who are out had contracted Covid or were in close contact with a positive case, and they are steadily returning to school as they complete their quarantine period.  Today the percentage of absence dropped to 22.26% for students and 10.21% for faculty.

I will meet with members of our administrative team every Friday to analyze the data from the previous week to ensure that we are doing everything we can do to ensure a safe learning environment for students and teachers. 

Here are a few topics we discussed during Tuesday's meeting, and I'd like to share that information with you:

Quarantine

I would first like to clarify the information about quarantine times. 

1. Students who test positive for Covid must quarantine for ten days. They do not need to have a negative PCR test if they fulfill the quarantine period.  Students may return sooner than this if they present a negative PCR test.  It would be highly unlikely, however, to receive a negative PCR test until 6 or 7 days after the initial positive test.
2. Students who have had close contact with someone who is not a family member who tested positive for Covid have two scenarios.
   • If they are vaccinated, they may come to school the next day.
   • If they are unvaccinated, they should stay home for five days and then get a PCR test. They may return to school with a negative PCR test.
3. Students who have had close contact with a family member they live with who has tested positive for Covid have three scenarios.
   • If they are vaccinated, they should stay home for 3 days and may return to school if they are symptom-free. They will still need to get a PCR test on day 5 and send the result to us.
   • If they are unvaccinated and if the family member with Covid is isolated in the home, the person who has been exposed may return to school after 5 days with a negative PCR test.
   • If they are unvaccinated and the family member is not able to isolate in the home, the person who has been exposed must quarantine for 10 days. This person may return after 8 days with a negative PCR test.

Support for students who need to quarantine because of Covid

High School and Middle School:  We are not able to offer live streaming of classes.  Teachers will post assignments and lessons, and we are in the process of setting up formal office hours for students who are at home to be able to contact their teachers with questions or issues.  Our goal is to get students back to class as quickly as possible.

Early Childhood and Elementary:  We are not able to offer live streaming classes.  Teachers will continue to post assignments on Seesaw.  Parents and students may contact classroom teachers with questions or issues.  Teachers will work with individual students to catch them up as soon as they return to school. 

Closing sections or closing school: What happens?

If we have four confirmed new cases of Covid in a particular class or section, we will consider shutting down that classroom for ten days.  We are more likely to shut down classes or sections of very young students who are less good about wearing masks and being socially distant.  We will shut down sections of older students if there are a few more cases. 

If sections are shut down, teachers of those sections will switch to asynchronous, recorded lessons in Early Childhood and Elementary School and live-streaming synchronous learning in the Middle and High School.

Because of the challenges of remote learning, our primary goal is to keep school open.  If, however, the number of cases is spreading rapidly within our own community, we may have to close school and switch to remote learning for what we hope would be no more than 2 or 3 weeks.  Based on the experience of the past week, it does not appear that this will be the case.

The Response Team will be sending a note with some separate updates.  Please take the time to read that.  Keeping our community safe requires a commitment from everyone.  Thanks so much for doing your part.

Sincerely,

Thomas Cangiano

Head of School

Empowering students to solve problems with creativity and integrity, to lead well-balanced lives, and to serve Lebanon and the world community with understanding and compassion.

American Community School Beirut

Beirut | 67 Nigeria Street, Jal El-Bahr

+961 (1) 374370