Dear CDS Families,
Yesterday, while greeting families at the little gate morning drop-off, I was astonished to see that, overnight, some of our EC students and EC teachers had aged rapidly overnight, looking about 100 years old as they slowly walked, hunched over and assisted by canes, into school. Besides canes, they had glasses, rather old-fashioned clothes, and lots of grey hair. When I asked a little, old boy-man what happened, he shared that since it was the 100th day of school, he, his classmates, and teachers all pretended to be a full century in age – 100 years old! (I believe they all took a nap after the mid-morning snack since they were tuckered out from the morning’s activities.) ES classes joined the 100-day celebration by bringing 100 small items (Legos, popcorn kernels, and my favorite – candies) to show and mathematically manipulate that amount. It feels to me that the school year, because of the pandemic and ongoing biosecurity protocols, has been a lot longer than 100 days so far. But as witnessed yesterday, we just hit that three-digit number – which means we have 81 more days left. So let’s aspire, together, to make them the most awesome 81 school days possible.
Covid Status
It’s vital to keep you updated on Covid-related issues at our school, especially with the contagious omicron variant present. As of today, we have 12 active student positive cases and zero active staff positive cases (five staff returned this week from quarantine). Like trends elsewhere, this represents infection variability within our CDS community, with reductions overall as compared to two weeks ago. Thankfully, nearly all the cases have presented mild symptoms, especially for the vaccinated, characterized often by a lingering cold. Throughout we have maintained the consistent health of our teaching staff and been able to deliver both face-to-face (and virtual learning, where needed) for our students, which helps the well-being of all. We imagine continued infection fluctuations throughout the next few months, and then hopefully a tapering off and return to low infection incidence like we had earlier this school year. Please keep us updated about your family’s vaccination status (parents and students), including boosters, by emailing this information to our school nurse, Martha Bello (martha.bello@cds.ed.cr).
Parent Satisfaction Survey
The NAE CDS Parent Satisfaction Survey closed earlier this week, on January 31. With a final motivational push by our Parents Association representatives, we surpassed the 80% response rate level, a significant increase from last year. Thanks to all of you for completing that survey. After all of the data is processed and initially analyzed by NAE Central in London and NAE Regional in Miami, we will receive our results, do our own analysis, and feedback on that information to you. I’m anticipating that should be in March sometime, so stay tuned.
As always, please write to me at cds_director@cds.ed.cr or call me at 2289 0919 ext. 2224 if I can do anything to help your children and your family have the absolute best experience possible at CDS. And I hope you enjoy a beautiful weekend.
With Panther Pride,
Dr. Scott Adams, Director
