Liebe TCGIS Gemeinschaft / Dear TCGIS Community,
After the CDC released new metrics for measuring the impact of Covid-19 illness on health and healthcare systems, including masking guidance, the IRT evaluated our criteria for masking to align with recommendations from our public health experts.
As your IRT has done since the beginning of the pandemic, we continue to follow the guidance from our public health experts. Before we transitioned to optional masking, however, we also wanted to receive staff and community feedback.
Based on our community feedback and our current school situation, we highlight a few key statistics:
- 83.1% of staff and 78.9% of families were comfortable with optional masking.
-
Ramsey and Hennepin County remain in the low category for the CDC Community levels. The CDC recommends the following in low community level areas: “Wear a mask based on your personal preference, informed by your personal level of risk.”
-
68% of TCGIS students are enrolled in weekly testing. 40 family survey respondents stated they would consider newly enrolling in weekly testing if masks were no longer required. Covid-19 testing will continue at TCGIS. If you would like to enroll your students in weekly testing, please contact Dani Nicholson: dnicholson@tcgis.org.
- Our positive case rates among students and staff have dropped significantly since our peak the week of January 3-7th. We had two positive cases the week of March 7-11, zero the week of February 28-March 4, one the week of February 21-25, zero the week of February 14-18.
TCGIS’s optional masking policy goes into effect March 21, 2022.
This timeline allows our educators time to prepare students for the transition. 62.1% of our staff requested transition time to effectively support our students. Please continue to follow Covid-19 community levels to decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data.
PLEASE NOTE: Students, staff, and visitors may choose to wear a mask at any time based on personal preference. All individual masking choices will be supported in all school spaces.
Discuss New Policy with your Students
In addition, we encourage families to discuss the new policy with their students before the transition on March 21. From our community's response, we know masking will be a personal family or student decision. Talking to your students about respecting other individuals' choices will help our school and classes have a better transition on March 21.
Contact Tracing
TCGIS will move away from individual contact tracing to notifying entire classes of a positive Covid-19 case within their classrooms. (As always, privacy will be protected.) Students who are not fully vaccinated (including boosters for those eligible) within the class will still be required to “Test-to-Stay” according to current MDH recommendations (pp. 8-9).
TCGIS Mask Policy, effective March 21, 2022
