Summer Camp Covid-19 Protocols
Resources for Summer at The St. Paul's Schools
It is the responsibility of The St. Paul’s Schools to protect the health and safety of our community while providing the best possible learning environment. We understand that the heightened precautions and awareness of the new Omicron variant have been challenging and stressful for students.
Maryland began to show a positive trend in Jan. 2022, with the positivity rate and number of new cases declining from the peak on Jan. 9. Moreover, our medical advisors have begun to describe Covid-19 in “endemic” terms and are discussing what it looks like to live with Covid-19 indefinitely in school settings. As we ride out the Omicron variant, St. Paul’s will maintain our effective risk-mitigation efforts while looking for areas to ease our restrictions as appropriate. With that in mind, we share the following updates.
Nothing is more important to us than protecting the health and safety of our campers and staff. We are grateful for your partnership and will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as necessary.
All questions related to Covid-19 and Summer at The St. Paul’s Schools should be directed to Stacie Gottlieb, director of auxiliary services, at sgottlieb@stpaulsmd.org. You may also email Shannon Duckett to report a potential exposure or to provide household testing updates and other relevant information. Please know that all personal health information will be kept confidential, although information may be shared with the public health officials who are working to protect our community.
We are working closely with our school’s Emergency Response Team and Medical Advisory Board on health and safety protocols for this summer. Our campers will experience the same care and concern that has allowed The St. Paul’s Schools students to engage in on-campus learning this year
Community Pledge
As we invite campers to campus for summer 2023, the partnership between home and school is more important than ever. Whether it is completing more detailed health information at registration or abiding by public health guidelines, we trust that our campers, families, and staff will commit to our community standards to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19 and keep our campus open.
Safety First!
Below you will find our Covid-19 policies related to vaccinations, quarantining, and masking. We realize, however, that much can change over time. We will continue to update our policies based on guidance from the state health department, CDC, and our leadership team at The St. Paul’s Schools. Thank you for your ongoing support as we all work together to respond to the shifting demands of the pandemic.
Vaccine Requirement
Getting vaccinated has proven to be our best line of defense against serious illness. Most members of our campus community already have taken this important step. We continue to urge all eligible members of our programs to get vaccinated and/or boosted as soon as possible. However, we will not require students to be vaccinated to enroll in our Summer at The St. Paul’s Schools unless it becomes a state health mandate for K–12 schools.
Contact tracing
If we have a positive case reported during summer camp, our nurse and camp staff will complete thorough contact tracing and reach out only to the families of campers identified as close contacts. Close contact activities include eating meals and/or snacks with the individual who tested positive and spending significant time with them inside or outside of camp.
Food and Drink
At this time, our goal is to have campers eat lunch with the same group of students on a daily basis. While we will eat outside as often as possible, weather scenarios may force us indoors for meals. By keeping our campers in the same group daily, it will allow for ease of contact tracing if there is a positive case. Based on the latest guidance from the Maryland State Department of Education and the CDC, we will follow a 5 day quarantine rule as long as symptoms have improved and campers can properly mask during days 6–10.
Masks
St. Paul's summer camps will operate with a mask-optional policy. This policy applies to all individuals, regardless of vaccination status, and will be based on personal/parental preference. Campers are welcome to continue to mask to feel more comfortable.
Wellness
To contain the spread of Covid-19, we urge you to please keep campers home at the first sign of any illness.
Fever Policy
If a student develops a fever of 100.0 F or above, they should stay out of camp until they are fever-free for 24 hours without the aid of antipyretic medication. Our camp nurse will use her clinical judgment to evaluate situations on a case-by-case basis. Please note that our pre-K campers will follow Maryland state childcare guidelines and have a different policy, requiring students to be fever-free for 24 hours with medication before returning.
Questions? Contact sgottlieb@stpaulsmd.org.
Updated December 5, 2022.