Reopening Questions

Yes, with this hybrid model, siblings will be placed in the same cohort, either purple or gold, and will attend school in-person on the same days and attend virtually on the same days.

Students and staff will be provided a uniform mask on the very first day of school which must be worn at all times except during the lunch block. Extra masks will be available for purchase should anyone wish to have more than one. There will also be disposable masks available for emergency situations when a student forgets her mask or loses it. Face shields are not required, but may be worn if the student choses.

Yes, students/families may choose to go completely virtual, however, this decision will be upheld for the semester, or until we return to everyday, in-person instruction. If the choice for virtual only learning is made and then the student decides to try the Hybrid model, every effort will be made to honor this request within the confines of class size, safety and social distancing requirements and scheduling. Look for information asking for this decision of virtual vs hybrid soon.

Fridays are NOT days off, rather we will use Fridays to bring entire classes together in-person for assemblies, retreats, workshops, or bonding experiences. The Friday schedule will be announced on a monthly basis. Students not attending in-person on Fridays will be working on assignments and “meeting” with teachers.

Each district determines what their transportation schedule will be at the start of the school year. The Mount has no say in schedules or social distancing/disinfecting policies for the districts. Some districts have indicated they may not be able to provide transportation before Labor Day. Please check with your local district for busing questions and concerns. Many have sent via email forms that must be completed by you if you are requesting busing for your daughter. Every attempt will be made to accommodate car pooling requests.

MSJA has every intention of resuming full-time attendance at the earliest possible date. In the meantime, a credit will be applied to the student’s account for busing services not received on dates the student is designated for online learning. This credit will be applied to the student’s account at the conclusion of every month until classroom attendance resumes full-time.

As long as the state/county recommends that social distancing guidelines must be followed and students must remain 6 feet apart, we will use the Hybrid Model to reduce capacity and allow for distancing in the hallways and classrooms. If the ban is lifted and students are permitted to return to the classrooms unrestricted, we will shift to our “normal” schedule. Conversely, if schools are required to close for any period of time, we will shift to an all virtual format. Student and staff safety are always our first priority.

The Mount will follow the guidelines provided by the PIAA outlining the parameters and safety measures for sports to continue. If at any time the PIAA announces that sports may not proceed, the Mount will abide by those orders. If your daughter has practice on a day that she is not in person at school, we suggest that teams work together to provide car pools to assist all athletes on a team to attend.

As directed by Montgomery County and the State of Pennsylvania, most meetings will be conducted virtually. We will announce plans for special events such as the Ring Mass as soon as we have plans in place. Since celebrating as a community is vital, every effort will be made to allow for this while observing the guidelines mandated by Montgomery County and the state of Pennsylvania.

The Disney trip for Sophomores who were unable to go and Freshmen in June has been scheduled and planned for next year, and will go on provided it is safe to travel. If this trip needs to be cancelled, we will do our best to reschedule this experience to another time when travel is safer.

As a team, once the schedule is completed, we will be looking at classroom capacity and class numbers to determine how to reduce the class sizes to allow social distancing in our rooms and hallways. All families will be notified via mail and email into which cohort they will be placed.

Students will still be required to sign in to Zoom to attend classes virtually on their IPads. No additional equipment is needed on the student side to participate in class. On some occasions, students may be asked to connect via Zoom on an additional device, for example, their phones, so that the full capability of the IPads may be utilized.

We are cognizant that this is a very difficult time for everyone in our Mount community. We are planning to utilize our flexible Friday schedules to plan class workshops, assemblies, and bonding activities to address this concern. Teachers will be inserviced on how to recognize mental health issues. A cohort of teachers are attending a workshop addressing the concerns around student mental health in connection with the Hybrid and Virtual learning models. They will then share best practices with all colleagues.

Our counselors will be present on campus daily and will also be reaching out for meetings with students via Zoom. Mrs. Karina Carnall, our school social worker, has been contracted for a full 5 days a week this year. She will also be coordinating group and special activities and programs throughout the year for all our students.

This is a reasonable question as it would be easy to assume that our overall costs at MSJA are reduced during the temporarily staggered opening of the school year, but that will not be our actual experience.

By way of explanation, it may be helpful to consider the fact that expenses at MSJA fall into one of two categories: Fixed Costs and Variable Costs.

Fixed costs are the type of expenses, which are incurred regardless of the type of education or to a large extent the number of students enrolled. For example, salaries & benefits; internet access fees, insurance, etc.

Variable costs have a degree of fluctuation depending on the type of programming that we provide and to a limited extent to the number of students present in the school. For example, field trip expenses, electricity, water, photocopies, etc.

At the Mount the vast majority of our expenses are actually fixed expenses. Salary and Benefit expenses paid to the faculty and staff account for nearly 70% of our annual budget. Faculty will continue to instruct our students at 100% capacity through in-person and on-line instruction. The other types of expenses categorized as fixed expenses combined with Salary and Benefits account for nearly 90% of our total budget.

We have realized some costs savings on our variable expenses. For example, our electricity and water usage rates may be down, but they will not be fully eliminated. Likewise we may save money on things like busing and photocopies.

However, the school in the current year, and in the upcoming year will incur expenses to address the pandemic that we normally would not have incurred. These pandemic related expenses will EXCEED the savings gained in the variable expense category. For example:

Upgrades are being made to the HVAC systems throughout the building to improve the filtration capabilities of the AC/Heating systems. These upgrades are a significant investment of funds, but these upgrades will reduce (not fully eliminate) the majority of airborne pathogens circulating throughout the building.

The Board approved upgrades to our IT infrastructure which will allow us to build out and offer a more robust distance learning program to provide for a maximum view of and engagement in the classroom.

Additional funding has been added to the Needs Based Scholarship Fund, to provide additional assistance to our MSJA Families suffering job loss/reduced wages due to the COVID 19 pandemic.

These are just a few examples of additional costs incurred to respond to the changing landscape of providing education services in the face of this pandemic. The cost associated with these examples exceed any savings that we have been able to achieve in our variable cost categories. As we plan for and start the next school year, there will be other unexpected costs that will be incurred by the school. For this reason, distance learning discounts are not possible because there has not been an overall reduction in the costs associated with managing our programs.

Our objective is to bring 100% of our student body back on campus safely as soon as possible. Thank you for your continued support and dedication as we navigate through these challenging times.