Health & Safety

---

Above all, our most important principle is to prioritize student, faculty, and staff health, safety, and well-being. To that end, we have taken important steps to build our school wide strategy of safety.

Task Force

We have formed a task force composed of educators, medical professionals, lay representatives from our Board , and administrators to guide us in the process of reopening.

Directors of Health & Safety

Additionally, to ensure protocols are adhered to, we have hired a part-time school nurse as our Health and Safety Director for our camp and school to lead this initiative at each building and satellite locations when we are back in session.

Strategy

Our strategy is outlined below:

• Focus on the variables we can control.
• Use reliable, scientific sources to guide our understanding of the virus that causes COVID-19 and how to best effectively prevent our community’s exposure to it.
• Remain adaptable, knowing experts’ understanding of the virus will evolve.
• Seek ways to reduce risk of virus transmission, not eliminate it.
• Identify external and internal drivers that would lead us to tighten or loosen restrictions.
• Ensure new policies are flexible and can be implemented and maintained.

Our approach is based on research including policies set by our Health Committee, guidelines provided by the Los Angeles County Health Department,  analyzing numerous publications, attending webinars, and closely following local and regional regulations and guidelines. This work continues to be refined, and as long as guidelines allow, we are committed to opening the doors in a safe manner.

Our Approach to Safety

Our approach to safety is based on four factors:

1. Social Distancing and Reducing Camper/Student Density
2. Health Screening and Preventative Hygiene
3. Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting
4. Communications, Training, and Coordination

Each of these critical areas help shape our approach to ensure our policies and protocols provide the necessary conditions to mitigate risk of exposure to COVID-19.

1. Social Distancing and Reducing Camper/Student Density

Infectious disease experts have promoted social distancing as an essential strategy in the containment of COVID-19. By their nature, schools are high-density, which can promote disease transmission.

We recognize that to effectively reduce the risk of infection, we must implement effective social distancing policies. When all campers/students and faculty attend camp and/or school at the same time, it is difficult for us to adhere to best-practice guidelines. For instance, classrooms cannot accommodate our current average class sizes, while maintaining adequate physical distancing.

When we approached our classroom spaces with a goal of sitting children 6 feet apart, we found that few classrooms would safely seat our classes. Therefore, the impact of distancing on our usable facility space became an important consideration moving forward.

To deal with this, we expanded our usable space by, placing large outdoor tents on our property and renting additional space.  By doing so, we have been able to quadruple our usable space.  

2. Health Screening and Preventative Hygiene

Another essential factor recommended by health care professionals involves mandating health screenings and preventive hygiene, which begins with hand washing and use of masks/shields. Coupled with physical distancing, these are the most effective strategies in containing COVID-19.

Health Screening: VTHS is requiring individual temperature and symptom screenings prior to entering the buildings each morning as long as it is deemed as an effective method in preventing COVID-19 transmission. Our goal is to prevent symptomatic children and adults from entering our buildings. Included in the health screenings will be our employees, security guards, parents and vendors.

Everyday hygiene practices are another key factor to prevent virus transmission. As has been well-documented, hand washing many times daily with soap and water for at least 20 seconds is critical. In addition to hand washing, frequent use of alcohol- based hand rub with formulations containing 60% ethanol or 70% isopropanol is a simple yet effective way to prevent the spread of pathogens and infections. Other preventative measures include coughing or sneezing into tissues or the inside elbow, avoiding touching your face, maintaining 6 feet distance when possible, wearing masks, and removing/replacing masks safely.

We have already installed hand sanitizing dispensers throughout our buildings.

If a child or adult develops symptoms while on our campus, we will have the individual in an isolated room at their location. The individual will be cared for by one identified person, who will wear the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and follow infection control practices designed to decrease the risk of transmission. We will call parents and arrange for the child to be picked up.

3. Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting

The third factor in VTHS’s operational strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is to ensure our cleaning protocols follow guidelines established by the CDC. Our cleaning regiment considers the important differences between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting, and we will be using cleaners that are approved by the CDC for combating COVID-19. We will implement a strict routine for frequent cleaning of classrooms, hallways, common areas, doorknobs, railings etc. when camp or school is in session along with a rigorous night-time disinfectant routine.

4. Communications, Training and Coordination

We plan to establish clear expectations for our VTHS community, a structure that is sustainable, and is flexible to adapt to changing realities. In addition to existing communications channels, we will implement signage in our buildings with our protocols, hygiene and social distancing reminders.

We need all members of our community to accept new responsibilities within this changed culture. Acting with self-awareness and sensitivity to others.

Specific Areas of Enhanced Protections 

Security and Building Access

While at VTHS we pride ourselves with our open-door policy, at this time non-essential visitors will be restricted from school buildings temporarily, until we can ensure our new protocols have become standard and routine. This will include family visitors. Essential visitors include vendors, package delivery vendors, and facility specialists.

Essential visitors will need access for entry through our security, that will incorporate a temperature and symptom check prior to entry. Signage at the entrance will indicate our health hygiene policy, including masks and hand sanitizing upon entering the campus.

Transportation

2020-21 school year will present enhanced challenges as we attempt to mitigate risks of COVID-19 exposure for students who ride vans to and from school. At this time, we do not feel comfortable providing transportation for our children.  We will continue to closely monitor the California and Los Angeles guidelines for transportation throughout the year and will communicate with you at a later date if guidelines change enough for us to feel that we can provide transportation in a safe manner.