January 12, 2020

 
Dear Families,
 
We proved during the fall that our doors could remain open for in-person learning as long as we are all doing our part to notify the School of the new onset of symptoms related to COVID-19. As a reminder, these symptoms include cough, shortness of breath, fever > 100.4, chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache, congestion/runny nose, loss of sense of taste or smell, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Staff and students should not attend school even if they have ONE of these symptoms. 
 
Moving forward, we want to remind our community of testing parameters and travel guidelines. In order for St. Martin’s to continue in-person learning and to mitigate risk of COVID-19 exposure, we are asking all families to notify
Jan Wilder, the Office Manager/Health Assistant, with any new onset of symptoms and any travel plans, including those over the upcoming MLK and President’s Day weekends. 
 
During this past holiday break, Governor Hogan issued a new travel advisory that is now concurrent with the travel guidelines we established prior to Christmas. ALL out-of-state travel that is overnight, not including work-related and commuter-based travel, should be reported to Jan Wilder, regardless of positivity rate. Upon return, a negative rapid and follow-up PCR* test (to ensure accuracy) is required to return to school, or a 10-day quarantine instead of testing as long as there are no symptoms. 

Though Virginia, Pennsylvania, DC, Delaware, and West Virginia are EXEMPT from the travel guidelines, we strongly encourage you to monitor symptoms and take a test upon return from these states, especially with increasing positivity rates.

Please note that we will continually address travel guidelines on a rolling basis, depending upon guidance from Governor Hogan, the MD Department of Health, and the CDC. As research and findings are ever-changing and the vaccine being administered through phases, St. Martin’s plans to stay abreast of the most recent updates in order to keep our community safe and our children attending in-person. 
 
With your ongoing cooperation and partnership, our goal together is for all students to continue learning on-campus, in-person, and five-days-a-week. We can only do this with your communications to our staff regarding new onset of symptoms and travel plans. 
 
Thank you for your understanding. 
 
Sincerely,
  
Jamey Hein, Head of School
Giovanna Schummer, Delegating Nurse

*Before this communication, we addressed the PCR test as RT-PCR or Reverse Transcriptase — Polymerase Chain Reaction, which is the specific type of process used to detect viral genetic material. As this was causing confusion, St. Martin’s will now refer to the test required by staff and families by its shortened, more widely-used name: PCR.