Feature: SPS Reconnected

A challenging Fall Term in the midst of a pandemic calls for flexibility and good faith.

Michael Matros

All possible precautions to prevent an outbreak of this disease have been taken,” reported Fourth Rector Samuel Drury in 1918, when St. Paul’s School managed, through social distancing and other means, to avoid contagion by the Spanish Flu. The challenge in 2020 is again to keep a virus away from campus and to continue providing an education appropriate to the traditions of St. Paul’s. When the novel coronavirus was originally identified in Wuhan, China, the SPS pandemic planning process was quickly re- activated, for the first time since the 2009 H1N1 flu filled Clark House beds and threatened to close the School.

But, while some fundamentals of pandemic planning are common to every outbreak of viral disease – especially the close observance of health rules promulgated by such agencies as the CDC and WHO – the coronavirus has upended many assumptions. One basic assumption – a full academic year in residence – was upended in March, when caution sent everyone home, and distance learning became the new (sort-of) normal.

“We’ve been planning for the 2020 fall opening since late December, early January,” explained SPS Medical Director Dr. John Bassi on July 23. “But what we knew then is different from what we know now, and we can expect that to be different again in six to eight weeks. In this dynamic situation, we need to be fluid and flexible in our decision- making, with the best information we have at the time.” And determining every decision, says Rector Kathy Giles, is that “we provide a St. Paul’s School experience as close to normal for every student.”

“We want your children to be safe, healthy, and well served,” Giles told parents in a July webinar. “That’s the end of all our work.” After the COVID-adjusted Spring Term, students began their return on Monday, August 31, and classes began that Friday, after a Thursday Convocation. Students, parents, faculty, and staff all received a number of detailed descriptions of what to expect when school opened, and what will be required of them all to ensure a safe campus. “If we can establish a safe, healthy baseline in the month of September,” Giles said, “we believe we can hold it and get a lot done.”

Meanwhile, in preparing for the Fall Term, she said, “We will meet or exceed everything the CDC and the State of New Hampshire have put out in regard to the safety and well-being of schools and other communities. Period. Everything we’re doing is flexible, based on their recommendations and requirements.” As the Year Begins For the school year to begin virus-free, students planning to return were required to self-quarantine for 14 days before traveling to Concord. They also had to provide confirmation of a negative COVID-19 test taken four to seven days prior to arrival, or documentation of having recovered from the disease. Students were tested again on arrival and quarantined until results arrived (the School is working with the Broad Institute for a maximum 24-hour turnaround time). Students were tested again five to seven days after arrival, as well. Faculty members completed a two-week self-quarantine, followed by PRC testing (required for all faculty and staff) prior to opening faculty meetings, which the School conducted according to social distancing and face mask requirements.

“We miss you,” Giles told students this summer, “but you really need to come back healthy. Are we going to check for 14 days of quarantine?” she said to parents in the webinar. “No, we aren’t. We need to trust that you have taken every possible precaution for your own child’s well-being, for all our well-being, and, honestly, for all of our faculty and staff members and all their families.” A student returning from South Korea through multiple airports faces more risk than a formmate driving in with her parents from Massachusetts, Giles pointed out. But a family living anywhere, whether China or Vermont, was given the option of delaying their student’s arrival and opting instead for distance learning for a period that could extend as long as the entire year.

“Our international students and families face special issues, from country-specific quarantine requirements to visa complexities,” Giles wrote to parents in June. “Dean of Admission Scott Bohan ’94 is leading a committee to identify these students’ and families’ special needs, and we will work with them accordingly.”

As of late July, parents were to have indicated whether they expected their students to return to campus or to begin the year as distance learners. Without that information, detailed planning for housing and other logistics would be impossible, Giles said. “It makes a difference whether we have 200 kids on the grounds, or 400,” she said. But however many students arrived in Concord for the Fall Term, they were urged to “bring less stuff!” In order to maintain safe dorm rooms and allow for ease of disinfecting protocols, students will live in more minimal environments than most of them are used to. As students left hurriedly last spring with little time to pack, “we saw the sheer volume of stuff that children bring to campus,” Dean of Students Suzanne Ellinwood said. This fall, students should be prepared for frequent room checks to ensure they’re living in a clean and sanitary environment. “We will store what they left – sofas, coffee tables and so on – at least through the first part of the year.”

“Pack as if for camp,” Ellinwood urged students. Since the spring, the School has worked extensively with the firm Environmental Health & Engineering of Newton, Mass., to anticipate and mitigate hazards that could affect the health of a residential campus. EH&E works with hospitals and other institutions to ensure compliance with all health issues necessary for certification. “We are working with EH&E on all our physical facilities,” Giles said, “and on all our processes – whether that’s how we clean bathrooms, how we serve food, how students and faculty use academic spaces.”

The Reverend Charles Wynder, SPS chaplain, greets a new student with an elbow bump.

In responding to EH&E’s focus on quality air circulation, the School ordered some 150 high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters for installation in academic buildings and elsewhere on campus. The company also consulted on arranging a daily schedule to minimize the risk of virus contamination. According to Vice Rector for Faculty Michael Spencer, EH&E has completed a full review of the School’s 61 academic spaces. “We know what the safe capacity for each classroom will be with physical distancing of six feet,” Spencer said. “We’ve also identified some other spaces to adapt for the purpose. Once we have an accurate sense of how many students we’ll have, then we can adjust as necessary.”

Another vital service has also been brought on board in the form of FLIK Independent School Dining. Newly hired to provide School meals, FLIK serves only private and independent schools. “They bring in their own team of COVID advisors and their own infectious-disease experts, Giles said. “So they will be a welcome partner in this endeavor, particularly as we want to make food more accessible and more mobile for our students this fall. We plan on adding some grab ‘n’ go options that will make it easier for kids to get food throughout the day.”

As the Fall Term begins, students will also confirm being symptom free via a daily health self-survey, involving a temperature check and questions about any current symptoms or contacts with anyone COVID-positive. It’s daily health information similar to what players in the respective bubbles of the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League are asked to provide to maintain a COVID-safe environment. As the year proceeds, Dr. Bassi will continue his frequent consultation with Dr. James Noble, an infectious disease specialist at Concord Hospital. Together with other specialists, they have created the basis of a protocol to care for students who test positive for the virus. The plan includes treatment away from residential houses, along with contact tracing, with supportive isolation if necessary for anyone who may have been exposed.

More frequently than ever, students will be reminded that stress, poor hygiene, inadequate sleep, irregular eating, and lack of exercise can weaken their immune systems. Healthy habits, not always observed in teenage years, will be especially essential as the community adapts toward remaining virus-free. The School Day The daily schedule, says Vice Rector for Faculty Michael Spencer, is “the mission of the School organized in time.”

“We schedule what we value as a community,” he says, “so the schedule we’ve developed for this year continues to value what we always have – academic rigor, time to develop the social and emotional learning that happens across every aspect of our curriculum, and the ongoing commitment to the relational context for learning. As we all know, relationships matter here.” As pictured on the newest version of the color-coded schedule card, familiar to students of the last decade or more, class days remain Monday through Saturday, each class meeting four times a week. This year, however, an arrangement allows for an earlier end to the academic day, designed in part for faculty office hours, so students learning remotely in some other time zones can more conveniently confer with teachers and advisers. Afternoons will be devoted to athletics and other activities – choir, orchestra, and so on – in three different shifts. A required Chapel meeting via Zoom will take place two afternoons a week, in a format to be decided upon knowing the on-campus population. To “de-densify” the dining halls, Spencer said, students and adults will eat in shifts for both lunch and dinner, instead of at common mealtimes. Weather may permit some outdoor eating options. The experience will extend beyond the classroom, as far away as any student who attends SPS via distance learning.

Art students have returned to the studio during the pandemic with appropriately distanced seating and required masks.

“We employed quite a bit of distance learning in the Spring Term,” Spencer said. “and we have learned from that experience. We know there will be students who will be learning remotely in hybrid classes. And so we have invested in technology that will allow us to invite students into class in a way that is different from a Zoom connection. We’ve purchased 360-degree cameras, transcription software, and other tools for hybrid classes.”

During the summer, Spencer said, the SPS faculty participated in professional development for distance learning, working especially with the Global Online Academy, a nonprofit whose mission is “to reimagine learning to empower students and educators to thrive in a globally networked society.”

“In learning these additional approaches to strengthening the online environment,” Spencer said, “our goal is to deepen student engagement and improve assessment in this unusual situation – all to bring ‘distant’ students as close to their school as possible, both academically and emotionally.” Throughout the academic year, the School’s Distance Learning Task Force, led by Humanities Head and Academic Technologist Melissa Poole, will continue to adapt approaches according to observations of what is working, and what is not. One goal for the afternoon, said Athletic Director Dick Muther, “is for everyone to get some good, healthy exercise every afternoon, outdoors if possible.” Activities can include club soccer, swimming, various racquet sports, canoeing, fitness, and others. “Students can mix it up or not,” he said. “There will be a lot of options.”

Interscholastic athletes can continue to grow in their sports, Muther added. He hopes some varsity and JV inter-school competition can take place by October, against New Hampshire schools that observe the same safety protocols. Varsity athletes anticipating winter and spring sports may participate in “skills and drills” with those respective coaches. The Fall Term plan calls for ballet and theatre to meet six days a week, as in the past. A Community Agreement “As adults at St. Paul’s,” Giles said, “we will need to emphasize with students that abiding with School rules is not a goal. It is a walk-over-the-threshold agreement.” That agreement, newly stated in a Student Campus Compact, she said, “requires a thoughtful reading before adding a signature.”

Desks have been spaced apart in classrooms throughout SPS, like this one in the Schoolhouse, to allow students to observe social distancing protocols.

“This situation will require some extra maturity from kids who are at a young age,” she said. “Some kids can take that in stride, and others will have trouble with it.” To parents, she said, “you know your children better than we do, and you’re in the best position to determine if yours might be better served by us while still at home. What we need to partner on is the idea that children who come to campus need to be as healthy as you can possibly hand them over to us. And then our job is to keep them healthy – both physically and mentally. The good faith this requires from us all – that matters a lot.” So much has changed, Giles noted in the July parent webinar. “It would be wonderful to assume that something was going to be the way that we’ve always been able to assume it’s going to be. Our work for the past months has brought us to the realization that we don’t have the luxury of making assumptions – to say, for instance, we know exactly how debate, or field hockey, or intervis is going to work.”

Giles added that the promise of continuing Chapel, choir, or orchestra, for example, that does not mean those activities will happen in the traditional model. “We won’t be gathering 700 of us in the Chapel,” she said. “We will be working toward alternative formats for Chapel, for music, for play practice. But we will have them. “We want very much to be the School our students chose when they decided to come to St. Paul’s,” Giles wrote. “So while we will take every reasonable precaution and err on the side of caution, we also want to honor our students’ emotional and psychological needs in continuing their secondary school education in a safe, healthy, comfortable, stimulating, fun environment.”

For updates to evolving news related to COVID-19 and St. Paul’s School, visit www.sps.edu.