MCS suspends classes March 16-18

Mount Carmel School will suspend classes from Monday, March 16, through Wednesday, March 18, but teachers, staff, and administrators will still report to work. Classes will resume on Thursday, March 19. However, to accommodate concerns from parents for the safety of their children and family members, the school will loosen its absentee policy to allow parents to keep their children home should they deem it necessary.

For a number of weeks now, Mount Carmel School has taken several precautionary measures to ensure the safety of our students, teachers, and their families, including suspending our short-term auditing program for foreign students, reinforcing campus cleaning with disinfectants, sharing information from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on proper personal hygiene, and requiring a 14-day quarantine for any member of the school family returning from off-island travel.

As an additional precaution, until further notice, when classes resume on Thursday, March 19, the school will exercise social distancing by suspending all major assemblies (flag raising, Knights Calisthenics, Friday Mass/Rosary, etc.) and student activities (sports games, fundraisers, dances, etc.) that involve more than 100 people.

This week, school officials will also meet with representatives from the Commonwealth Health Care Corp. (CHCC) and the CNMI COVID-19 Task Force to review and refine the school’s current policies and procedures.

School officials are also working closely with the CNMI Office of the Governor, the CNMI Public School System (PSS), the Commonwealth Coalition of Private Schools, the CHCC, and the CNMI COVID-19 Task Force to develop shared protocols for any mitigation and containment efforts that will be taken against the spread of COVID-19, which may include long-term school closures.

The school does have a contingency plan to transition learning online. With a majority of our teachers having been certified by the EdTech Cohort program, our communication and media infrastructure in place, and our entire student information management system online, we are positioned to make that transition. If and when that transition occurs, we will provide guidance for students and their families to help them make the transition.

“Please be assured that, as with every major initiative or emergency precaution that we take at Mount Carmel School, no matter what we do, we will provide ample notification and information to all students, parents, teachers, and families via email, our website, all our social media outlets, and local media. In other words, you will definitely hear from us and know what to do,” the school said in a statement.

“These are challenging times, but we have survived devastating typhoons, economic recessions, and many other tragedies. With faith in our Lord, and faith in each other, we will get through this together. We are Knight Strong,” it added. (PR)