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From the Desk of Head of School Ned Smith
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Dear EHS Families,
We are excited to welcome you to the 2021-2022 school year! As we launch our 38th school year, building on our strong legacy and history of excellence, it remains our top priority to ensure a strong start to the school year balancing the health and safety of our community with renewal and reaffirmation of the centrality of our Episcopal identity, our faith, and our mission. Our first week of preseason for Arts and Athletics concluded successfully today, freshmen and their parents began their year at Wednesday's Opening Knight celebration on campus, and faculty return beginning next week.
Mindful of our mission and culture and the importance of extra attention for both our freshman and our sophomore students, masks will continue to be optional both indoors and outdoors at EHS for the foreseeable future. Please continue to respect those students and adults who prefer to wear a mask.
In the face of the conflicting guidance from our state and national authorities, some of which has yet to be updated for the new school year, our decision relies primarily on the wide availability of COVID vaccines for which all in our community are eligible as well as our respect for individual choice in matters of health care. We continue to recommend that all who can get vaccinated do so.
We will continue to follow the instructions of the Harris County Health Authority, the agency with legal authority regarding certain health-related matters at the school. While they have provided no recent updates, we anticipate that they will continue to follow the CDC definition of close contact and quarantine/isolation. Regarding contact tracing, we will focus our efforts on school-sponsored activities.
We are eager to return to a more typical classroom environment and so will not employ remote instruction this year as our small class sizes allow for three-foot spacing within classrooms. We will not ask for daily health attestations, but we do expect students and adults to self-monitor for COVID symptoms and to remain off campus if symptomatic. We return to normal cafeteria service at break and at lunch with students respecting common sense social distancing while eating and socializing in the USC and outdoors. We are particularly excited about getting back to daily Chapel and will communicate those logistics closer to the start of school.
In the event of quarantine/isolation and with the approval of the appropriate grade level dean, students will be able to view class remotely. Importantly, this is not virtual school, so students will not be able to interact with their teachers or their classmates during these classes though there remain many other options for communication outside of class – e.g. Teams, Canvas, phone, and email. Parents are responsible for students who are in quarantine/isolation, and students are responsible for making up all the work that they miss while away from school.
Finally, several COVID-19 modifications were widely praised in our spring surveys across all constituents and will continue this year. Notably, we are keeping all our tents outside the USC for use during class time and for meals, and there will be three fully virtual class days per semester, allowing for ongoing practice in important technology skills and greater flexibility for school and family on those days.
The linked FAQ is designed to offer the most current guidance on the full range of our COVID protocols. Likewise, we remain ready to answer any questions that you have on these or any other topics.
We are excited to build on our years of Episcopal tradition and excellence and to begin this new year, welcoming you back to what makes us so special: our mission, our faith, and our strong community, all expressions of our love of God and one another.
Go Knights,
Ned Smith
Head of School
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