Dear Wissahickon Board of Directors and Administration,

Thank you for all of your hard work to date keeping our children and community safe! We are in exciting times with case numbers dropping, and therefore steps towards "normalcy" being able to begin. However, we are not fully out of the woods, and we all feel very strongly that  Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance should continue to be followed to the best of our ability. 

The removal of mask requirements raises multiple questions that need to be addressed in order to continue to keep our community safe, and maximize the amount of time children are in school.  

We are asking that the following measures be put into or kept in place:

• Require COVID-positive students and staff returning after a 5 day quarantine to strictly mask for another 5 days. (While not specified in CDC guidance, consider requiring and providing a high quality mask such as a KN95).
• Continue with common sense precautions: HEPA filters, maximized ventilation, readily available hand sanitizer, and frequent cleaning of high touch surfaces.
• Require visibly sick children who do not meet exclusion criteria and do not have a recent negative COVID test or Doctor's note approving a return to school to mask until symptom free.
• Continue contact tracing and classroom notifications.
• Set transparent classroom and school wide case thresholds, in consultation with the Montgomery County Department of Public Health, that trigger masking in a classroom/school or a move to virtual in a classroom/school.
• Include in the new health and safety plan an easy to implement on-ramp back to increased precautions should county transmission increase to "high".
• Maintain distancing during lunch and snack until the county is in the "low" transmission stage as defined by the CDC. There are children with vulnerable family members, and children who themselves are vulnerable, for whom distancing when eating is highly important. 
• If this is not possible, offer alternative eating accommodations for children who live with vulnerable family members, or who are vulnerable themselves. 
• Avoid large gatherings during school hours, such as indoor assemblies, until the county is in low transmission.  If the activity is a required school event and the county is NOT in low transmission, masks must be required. 
• Continue to participate in the Test to Stay program.
• Hold adult volunteers to the same vaccination/testing protocol required of teachers and staff.

Thank you for all that you do.

Sincerely,

Wissahickon School District Parents