Dear ISB Community,
Potential Reopening of School Campuses
Following the announcement by the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) regarding the reopening of school campuses for in person learning, we have been finding out more about the process and timeline.
ISB’s Headmistress, Ajarn Usa Somboon, met with representatives of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday evening. The process for opening, as far as we are aware, is as follows:
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The Ministry of Public Health has issued initial guidelines for safely reopening school campuses for learning. Additional guidelines will be forthcoming soon.
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Individual schools should submit their safety proposals to the relevant authorities – for ISB this means the Nonthaburi Provincial Committee of the Communicable Disease. These proposals are to be updated when the additional measures are announced.
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Nonthaburi authorities will then assess the proposal and make an onsite visit.
The ISB proposal will be submitted shortly and we anticipate that the earliest possible date that students may return to campus is Monday 20th September. However, it is important to remember that the situation remains fluid, final government requirements are not yet known, and we are unsure how long the approval process may take. We will update the community as soon as we know more.
Next week, we will share our key safety measures for opening campus and conduct a community intention survey to find out:
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Which students will be returning to school
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Which students will remain learning virtually
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Updated parent and student vaccination status (note – at this stage there will not be a requirement for students to be vaccinated).
Completion of this survey by all community members is very important for our planning purposes.
Once we know the number of students that intend to return to on campus learning, we will then publish the schedule and reopening format.
Please also note that depending on the approved opening date, the dates of the October Break may be adjusted.
We will hold a Zoom Webinar for parents on Friday 10th September at 8:00am (Bangkok time). Please click here to register.
We recognize that there may still be students who need to study from home and we will continue to provide virtual learning for those students.
If anyone has questions or if we can help with anything, please reach out to any of us listed below.
All the best,
Andy
0818516277
Andy Davies (Head of School) andrewd@isb.ac.th
Dhave Setabutr, M.D., (Director of Health Center) dhaves@isb.ac.th
Usa Somboon (Headmistress) usomboon@isb.ac.th
Mark Hevland (Director of Risk Management) markh@isb.ac.th
Debi Caskey (Deputy Head of School for Learning) debic@isb.ac.th
Marc de Vries (Deputy Head of School/CFO) marcd@isb.ac.th
Justin Alexander (HS Principal) justina@isb.ac.th
Dennis Harter (MS Principal) dennish@isb.ac.th
Michael Allen (ES Principal) michaela@isb.ac.th
John Leiner (Director of Admissions) johnl@isb.ac.th