Dear Manzanita Community,

Greetings! Thank you to the many families who joined our Question & Answer sessions held last week. We continue to meet daily as an administrative team, and this Monday we will convene our full instructional staff to continue our robust preparations for the fall. We have several contingencies in place, and families can rest assured that Manzanita will always have well-considered and creative solutions to whatever challenges we are facing in the time of this pandemic. Whether in-person, or virtually, Manzanita will offer an exceptional program for our students and families.

As we shared last week, Los Angeles County is currently on the state’s “Watch List” which means all public and private schools in Los Angeles County are prohibited from conducting in-person instruction until the rates of COVID-19 drop below 100 cases per 100,000, for 14 days in a row. Los Angeles is one of 33 counties (out of 58 statewide) that are on this list. As of today, the state watch list shows Los Angeles County at 343 daily cases per 100,000 people. Importantly, this table reflects a 7-day ‘lag’ period, meaning these 343 cases shown represent the data from about a week ago. Fortunately, in looking at the local data trends for our county, updated daily, the rates of infection appear to have dropped by about 30-40% in just the last five days. This drop is likely due to renewed mitigation enforcement, and increased public awareness. We remain hopeful and optimistic that this trend will continue, allowing Los Angeles to come off the watch list, and allowing in-person instruction to resume. We also recognize that there are many unknown variables, and considerable uncertainty in this time. We are therefore preparing for any and all contingencies.

You may have heard in the news that there is one exception to this mandated campus closure for watch list counties; this is via a ‘waiver’ process available to students in grades K through 6th. This means that school districts and the directors of private schools may apply through Los Angeles County for a state-approved waiver to have students receive instruction in-person and on campus. As noted, this is restricted to younger students, up to and including 6th grade. Our contacts at the county inform us that the specific application criteria will be forthcoming in "the next few days.” Once the criteria are made public, Manzanita will apply for a waiver to allow in-person instruction in grades 3 through 6. We do not presently know how long this process will take, nor how many waivers will be granted, but we remain convinced that younger students can safely return to campus with the program we have outlined. Under the current government mandates however, MNZ students in 7th through 12th grades will return to the Big Rock campus only after Los Angeles County has sufficiently reduced rates of COVID infection to below 100 daily new cases per 100,000 residents. Despite these restrictions, we have recently witnessed increased social and political pressure on the California state government to reconsider its criteria for re-opening, in favor of more local flexibility. We trust that innovative models for in-person instruction will continue to receive special consideration in these ongoing discussions.

We feel strongly that our reopening plan, which includes serving a small number of students outside, on 21 acres of land, in small pods, remains a safe option for staff and students. Therefore, we are working to get the attention of local health and safety representatives to make them familiar with our program and to bring awareness to the benefits of outdoor schools in relation to COVID-19, in an effort to support additional avenues for re-opening.

Please know that we will always remain proactive and vigilant in gathering and analyzing available information and data, and in communicating regularly with our community. Please stay tuned for an additional update next week.

Thank you dear families.

In Gratitude,

Manzanita School Leadership Team