Coronavirus (COVID–19)

Return From Break Reminders

• Lower School COVID Quarantine Policies
• Middle and Upper School COVID Quarantine Policies

After considerable conversation with our COVID Task Force, other Heads of School, RIDOH officials, and physicians, we have updated our COVID Guidelines for Early Childhood through Grade 12 students. Read the full message from the COVID Task Force here.

Read the updated guidance for PreK through Grade 12 from RIDOH here. See the full updated playbook here.

The CDC has made some changes to their guidance, which impact Lincoln School's COVID Guidelines. Namely:

• Terminology around vaccination has change. "Fully vaccinated" is no longer in use, and we will refer to being "up to date with vaccination."
• Everyone age 12 and older should get a booster dose. 

See the Lincoln School COVID Guidelines for Early Childhood through Grade 12 students and faculty/staff for details.

As we move into the next phase of the pandemic, RIDOH and DHS continue to update their protocols. One important change for our Little School and not yet vaccinated Early Childhood families is that we will be shifting to a “monitor to stay” policy for children who are exposed to a COVID-positive individual who is not part of their household.  This policy will go into effect as of March 14, 2022. 

Instead of quarantining at home after an exposure, students who are non-household close contacts can return to school if parents:

• screen their child thoroughly for symptoms of COVID-19  for a period of 5 days following their exposure and attest daily that they are symptom free HERE
  • If a child has any symptom of COVID-19, the family will need to keep the child home.
• have their child wear a high-quality, well-fitting mask when possible if the student is 2 years or older;
• have their child tested on day 5 after exposure; and
• closely monitor for symptoms for 10 days (Nurse Diane or Nurse Carla will also be checking up on the children at school).

If your child develops any one symptom of COVID-19 during this time, they must stay home, isolate, and get tested. Your child may resume Monitor to Stay/return to school if:

• They have a negative PCR or antigen result
• their symptoms are resolving and
• they’ve been fever-free for 24 hours without fever reducing medication

Please note that should the transmission rate in Rhode Island change, adjustments will be made to this guidance.

Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools

Recent RIDOH changes have prompted some changes to our process since we last communicated, so please read this message fully.

Testing

RIDOH recently suspended state-run testing for individuals who are asymptomatic, including K–12 students returning after breaks. We recognize the challenges of post-break testing requirements without this resource available to families, so we will not require a COVID test to return to school.

We do, however, strongly recommend that students test at home if possible prior to returning on March 28, particularly if your family has traveled over break. (Students who have been diagnosed with COVID within the 90 days prior to March 27 are exempt from testing.)

We will conduct pool testing of all students (except those who are exempt) on Tuesday, March 29.

Masks

As we shared in our previous communication, Lincoln will shift to optional masking beginning on Monday, April 4, for students, faculty, and staff. Advisors and classroom teachers will facilitate conversations around the different factors that may influence whether a member of our community chooses to wear or not wear a mask after April 4.

We want students to be able to recognize that decisions around masking are not black and white, and there may be a variety of factors—some of which may be known to us and some which are private—that influence an individual's decision. Additionally, the decision to wear a mask or not is one that many people will revisit continuously based on changing circumstances, rather than a one-time decision.

Thank you for your continued support of Lincoln’s efforts to ensure the health and safety of everyone in our community.

We hope you have a safe and enjoyable Spring Break!

 

Now, we find ourselves in a new chapter of the pandemic, one in which a third of Rhode Islanders have had COVID at least once since March 2020 and many people consider COVID to be entering the endemic phase. At the same time, we are experiencing a considerable uptick in cases locally, which is reflected in our increasing school cases.

While we still strive to give our community timely, clear, and helpful information, we recognize that many among us have some degree of COVID communications fatigue and that precise contact tracing becomes more challenging as we enter this new phase.

In an effort to strike a balance between sufficiently thorough information and concise, timely communications, we are making some changes to how we share COVID information with the community.

First, we have updated the design of the COVID Dashboard. We now have a New Daily Cases section with real-time updates for the current week. This will augment our existing Active and Cumulative Cases data, which we continue to update on Friday afternoons. At any time, you can check the dashboard to see the latest trends in each division and building (for the Little School). The presentation of Active and Cumulative Cases data has been streamlined, but how the data are tabulated remains unchanged.

Second, we are moving the detailed guidance for in-school close contacts from the notification email to the COVID Guidelines on our website. We will continue to send notification emails to families and Upper School students, but these messages will be streamlined with a link to the close contact guidelines, for those who need it. By maintaining guidelines on the web rather than in each notification, we are able to ensure that the guidance is up-to-the-minute and consistent across communications.

For our Middle and Upper School students, we will also be changing how we identify close contacts slightly. Because of our current mask optional policy and the way grades in these divisions congregate—both in class and out—we have decided to err on the side of caution when identifying possible close contacts. When we have a case in one grade or sport or club, we will consider everyone in that division a likely close contact.

Identification of close contacts for our Little and Lower School students will remain unchanged.

Lastly, please continue to notify us using the healthteam@lincolnschool.org account if you have a positive case in the home—even if it is not a Lincoln student—or if your student has COVID-like symptoms. With cases once again rising in Rhode Island, we want to remain vigilant in our monitoring to ensure a healthy spring for all! 

As always, Sophie, Nurse Diane, and our division directors are happy to discuss questions or concerns. We thank you for your ongoing partnership and support.