Greetings Kent Community,

We are working hard to employ changing health and safety guidelines to keep our students and staff as safe as possible, and our campus operating smoothly, in the face of this Omicron variant surge. The below updates to our COVID-19 mitigation strategies, and our approaches to safe schooling, reflect recent adjustments prompted by the Public Health department as of Tuesday, January 4, 2022.

• All individuals on our school campus must keep a mask secure over their mouth and nose indoors and outdoors, with the exception of when they are eating or drinking outside. No eating or drinking is permitted inside.
• During rainy day recess and lunch periods, students will not be permitted to eat indoors. Students will eat snack and lunch outside under overhangs, though they may play inside classrooms following our rainy day lunch practices as long as they are masked and not eating/drinking.
• Kent will not hold any large school gatherings of more than 50 people. This standard does not apply for academic purposes, like multiple PE classes sharing the Gym during a class period.
• The Library will be temporarily closed before school, during recess, and during lunch given the large number of students who circulate through this space, and the challenges with contact tracing during unstructured time in the Library.
• Only vaccinated and boosted parents/guardians of team members will be permitted to attend indoor sporting events. Kent has partnered with a security agency to help complete vaccine verification and enforce masking requirements at Kent basketball games. Basketball games have been postponed until the week of January 24.
• Any essential volunteer working with children will be required to submit vaccination/booster verification prior to volunteering.
• If your student tests positive for COVID-19, please notify the school immediately. Students who are quarantined due to a positive COVID-19 case or a COVID-19 close contact will have access to classwork through the Google Classroom site for each class.More information can be found on this linked letter.
• If your child tests positive for COVID-19, they must enter a 5 day isolation period. A negative test is required on day 5 or 7 to return on day 6 or 8, otherwise individuals return on day 10 with no test if symptom-free and fever-free without medication for 24 hours. Please provide the school with the negative test results before sending your child back to school.

Last Friday morning our school counseling team, assistant principal, and I led a Principal Coffee discussion about Social and Emotional Learning at Kent, as well as the many ways that our team supports students’ social, emotional, and mental health at school. If you missed the Principal Coffee presentation and discussion, linked here is a recording of our session together (password: BzP?2zzk).

Thank you for your cooperation and partnership as we all adjust to the fluid landscape of this pandemic, and the individual sacrifices we are all making to keep others safe and school operating smoothly. Please reach out to me anytime with any questions or concerns.

Be well,

Mock Newbery Club: meets Mondays at lunch outside the library. The club reading list can be found here.

Newspaper Club: meets on Tuesday during study session.

Need Book Recommendations?

Email me at rjelen@kentfieldschools.org and follow us on Instagram @kentmiddleschoollibrary.