Hello Families—
We have 3 COVID-related updates to share with you and while it is a lot of information, we do ask that you read it all in its entirety, as these COVID safety protocols are very important to the safety of our whole BND community.
As Covid cases are on the rise, both locally and in other parts of our state and country, we wanted to remind families of important safety protocols and update existing ones to reflect new city and statewide guidelines.
As the holidays approach, along with increased COVID cases, any travel/visits outside of NYC need to be communicated with BND. This includes both states requiring mandatory quarantine & PCR testing as noted in the updated NYC Covid Guidelines as well as states not on the governor’s list. While the governor’s list of restricted states does not include certain nearby states, their rate of infection is currently quite high as well. If anyone in your immediate family travels to these states, we will ask for specific details as to the length of trip, activities, interactions, and precautions taken. We will then decide how to proceed and if the quarantine & PCR test results are necessary prior to your child returning to class.
Please note: in addition to travel for you, your child, or immediate family, it is also necessary to communicate if you have any guests, caregivers, or interactions with those that have come from out of NYC, especially from restricted and high infection rate states.
Please read the below carefully
If NYC public schools go fully remote in the coming weeks, we still intend to continue running BND classes as planned, as we are a separate organization who operates solely outdoors. However, in the event of increased state or city regulations/restrictions, which would prevent us from being able to run classes, or if we reach a point in which we feel it would be irresponsible or unsafe to continue classes, we would need to close. The length of any sort of BND closure would be decided upon given the information we have in the moment.
As stated above, as a result of the recent changes to Governor Cuomo‘s COVID-19 travel protocols, we are updating ours at Brooklyn Nature Days as well. Please keep these travel guidelines in mind when making Thanksgiving travel plans and please let us know if you have traveled or plan to travel outside of NYC.
Please read the following guidelines carefully and note that even though Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut are not on Governor Cuomo‘s mandatory quarantine list, due to increased cases everywhere we are not exempting them at Brooklyn Nature Days. Travel to the contiguous states listed above can be reviewed on a case-by-case basis but as a general rule, your family will need to quarantine for four days and receive negative PCR test results if you travel outside the New York City.
The guidelines for travel outside New York City are as follows:
The traveler must, upon arrival back in New York, quarantine for three days.
On day 4 of their quarantine, the traveler must obtain a COVID test. If this test comes back negative, the traveler may exit quarantine upon receipt of the negative diagnostic test.
Please also note that any family members traveling TO New York City to visit you FROM any other state must get a test 3 days prior to their arrival in New York. If this test is negative, they are permitted to travel to New York City. They must, in addition, follow the two step guidelines above that include a 3-day quarantine followed by another COVID test on day 4 of their arrival in NYC.
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-travel-advisory
Another change we need to implement, effective Monday, 11/16, concerns daily temperature checks. We have noticed that cold temperatures, wind, and other severe weather elements cause our thermometers to stop working and become unreliable. For that reason, we are now asking families to check their child’s temperature at home before bringing their child to class. We have searched high and low for thermometers that work well in all weather, but there is just nothing that is 100% reliable enough for our purposes. Please take your child’s temperature before leaving for class each morning and notify us if it is higher than normal.
ALL STAFF AND CHILDREN MUST TAKE TEMPERATURES AT HOME PRIOR TO COMING TO CLASS TO REPORT RESULTS.
Brightwheel has added a health check-in to their check-in kiosk which we will begin using on Monday 11/16. Teachers will still ask you the daily health questions but now it will also include “what was your child’s temperature this morning?” The questions will also be built into the check in process and teachers will just read them to you and check them off and proceed with check-in if you answer “no” to each question.
Teachers will still carry thermometers to double check any kiddo who seems unwell throughout the morning and afternoon. Teachers will also continue to recheck any child who stays past 1pm.
All of these updates can also be found on our COVID blog here: https://brooklynnaturedays.com/covid19-updates
Thank you all for your support and compliance with these updated safety protocols. It takes a whole community to keep one another safe during these strange times and we appreciate each of you being on this public health journey with us. Please let us know if you have any questions and thank you for sharing your budding naturalist with us!