Dear Haverford School Community,
The Haverford School is a place of joy and love, discovery and innovation. The boys inspire us and challenge us to be our best. While we will strive to sustain and grow these connections, which are so critical to the Haverford School experience, I am writing today to inform you that it now appears that we must do so virtually for the remainder of the school year.
In accordance with the recent guidance issued by Governor Wolf due to the increased risk of community transmission of coronavirus, The Haverford School campus will be closed for the foreseeable future. All extracurricular and sports activities and all community gatherings will be postponed. We hope to reschedule many of these celebrations in months and years to come; in particular, we are exploring ways to conduct virtual moving-up ceremonies for Fifth Grade and Form II and a virtual Commencement Ceremony for the Class of 2020 if the Commonwealth requires us to remain closed through the end of the school year.
We will plan to continue Virtual Haverford for the remainder of the school year following the current school day schedule, while hoping against hope that the Governor will rescind his order and allow us to teach on campus. I have asked teachers to provide several optional enrichment, homeroom, and advisory meetings through the course of spring break to maintain community togetherness during this difficult time.
We are continuing to refine Virtual Haverford based on lessons learned this week, but our general plan remains to conduct instruction during the morning and to provide time in the afternoon for individual student meetings, additional help from our Enrichment and Learning Center, and parent conferences. Division Heads will communicate the refined individual division schedules with families and with the boys. We are now thinking through how we will assess the boys’ learning, and we will provide additional information on that process soon. Like almost everything else, it will be different, but we will do our best to make sure that learning continues and that the boys are prepared for school or college next year.
It is hard to overstate how disappointed we all are at this turn of events. We love helping the boys grow, celebrating their achievements, seeing the love they have for each other. It will be harder to do all of those things virtually, but we will do our very best to keep the magic of Haverford alive over the wires.
It is very important to remain calm at this time, and throughout the days and weeks that follow, while following the very sensible instructions of the Governor to preserve the health of our community. Sadly, this is not a time for playdates or sleepovers or gatherings beyond your immediate family unit. We are social animals, and this isolation is difficult, but with diligence, common sense, and teamwork – some of the same skills we teach our boys – we will endure and prevail.
