Letter to ICS Leadership re 7 April campus closure
Jay Till
ICS Comms
Dear Jay and other ICS families,
Thank you for your thoughtful email and letter of concern. We appreciate you all bringing your concerns and feedback to our attention through our open communication channels. It’s important and helpful to hear from families via your letter and the many other emails we have received in support and advocating for such a decision.
I am sorry you felt blindsided by our decision to move online. From the beginning of the school year, we have clearly communicated in the Weekly, our Campus Playbook, and through direct emails that we would do everything we can to stay on campus as long as it is safe to do so, but that we would not hesitate to move our operations online if the risk became too great.
Our email on Friday was to provide more information to our community and we hoped to have addressed additional questions. In a community school there are actions/decisions that require community involvement like strategic planning, however, the decision to move to online learning sits with the leadership, in consultation with our health and safety advisors. This difficult decision is not unique to ICS and has been made by many schools around the world during this global pandemic.
While there is no doubt that our preferred method of instruction is face to face, unfortunately, we have reached the point, where we see an immediate horizon where it will no longer be safe for your children and our employees to gather at school every day. With the rising positive cases in Ethiopia, the lack of access to a Covid vaccine, and the lack of ICU beds and oxygen, we cannot in good faith put our students and employees at further risk.
However, we owe it to our students to continue their education and deliver a viable curriculum and meet our learning targets for the year, safely. Moving to online learning is the only reasonable option.
Things are evolving very rapidly in Ethiopia. The recent activities and announcements in the last 48 hours have only reinforced our decision to be proactive. This includes:
The Ministry of Health and FDRE General Attorney held a press conference acknowledging seriousness of Covid in Ethiopia and reiterating existing Covid restrictions and enforcement of the protocols with strict fines for non compliance. Protocols for schools will be out shortly. We hope to share a written summary from the government soon.
We’ve learned that Kenya went on lock down with lower daily cases, access to vaccines and better healthcare facilities and supplies. The International School Kenya/ISK will be required to move to online learning on Monday.
We are hoping that we will be able to stay on campus until April 7, but as always, we will be ready to move online sooner if needed.
We will review and discuss your email and letter in our Leadership Team meeting and we will have a Parent Town Hall meeting this week.
Additionally, on our website on the Covid-19 Resources page we list and share some of the resources we use. We refer to the CDC and WHO guidelines, we use the Johns Hopkins Covid mapping. We also tap into other experts and advisors that include the EPHI and Ministry of Health, many hospitals, and clinics in Ethiopia and in the US, other doctors, epidemiologists, other Heads of International schools throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe, and a network of over 100 medical professionals around the world.
I can’t stress enough how thankful we are that you have reached out and shared your feedback and concerns. This has been a very difficult decision based on health and safety. I hope this addresses some of your concerns and questions.
You will be hearing more from the Head of School and divisional leadership soon. If you have any questions, please use this forum or email directly to communi...@icsaddis.org
Best regards,
tilman hannig
Dear Kristi and ICS Leadership,
Your mailbox must be overflowing with questions, concerns, and requests of parents who feel blindsided and cannot quite understand and re-enact mentally the decision-making process that led to the decision to fully close campus as of April 7th.
Thank you for providing answers to some of the many questions and concerns that were voiced in the joint letter from March 26th. This is much appreciated. However, for a decision of such magnitude, I think we deserve some more answers and transparency.
We are disappointed with the lack of prior involvement of the parents. We hope that this trend of unilateral decision-making will not continue in the following months. It betrays the spirit of community the school so often invokes.
Additional communication by the school (Q&As) “told us off” that this was a medical, and a medical decision only. This is a surprising way to communicate and a surprising decision to come from a school that just a few days prior reiterated that “any day on campus is better than any day in homeschooling”. Do social and educational factors not need to be weighed in?
You state that “with the rising positive cases in Ethiopia (…), moving to online learning is the only reasonable option”. Which other options have you taken into consideration? Please help us understand. Somewhere along the way you lost us. Other international schools have found alternative approaches to full closure of campus. We feel the example of the International School in Kenya is quite distorted and misleading, since Kenya has imposed a lockdown, whereas Ethiopia has not taken this step.
In the joint letter from March 26th there were several phased approach options listed – and we get the feeling you have dodged that question. What is the reasoning behind discarding all alternative approaches as other school are doing (smaller bubbles, alternating school days, etc.)?
And finally, why does ICS have to close for 3 months and is not opting for a more measured approach like other international schools in Ethiopia are doing, which are closing for a few weeks only and then re-assess the situation?
As you see, the decision continues to be difficult for parents and children. Please enlist what you do to accommodate our additional suggestions – keeping the library open, using the sport facilities, limited number of children in tutoring classes, etc. – to alleviate the shock and burden of 3 months of homeschooling on children and parents.
Thank you
Julia and Tilman Hannig
ICS Comms
Thank you for your email.
Yes, we are getting a number of emails from families sharing their concerns, and emails from families expressing their support for our decision to move online on April 7.
We do understand your disappointment with the move online and with our decision to keep our students and employees safe. I do apologize if you felt you were being “told off”. We wanted to provide an answer to your questions, and wanted to make sure it was clear as to why we made the decision. Simply put, it was a medical and safety decision.
There is no doubt that our preferred method of instruction is face to face, we have been very clear and bold as to our intention to stay on campus as long as possible. We believe that we have demonstrated by our actions that we have done everything in our power to open our campus, and keep it open for students during this global pandemic, even when some community and governmental voices were advocating otherwise.
We also believe that ICS has defied the odds this year through carefully listening to our medical advisors, our faithful adherence to our campus playbook, and the help of an amazing group of teachers, parents, and students who have played by the rules in order to mitigate the risk as much as possible.
However, the ICS community has been more impacted by Covid than you might think. In recent months we have had an increased level of serious Covid cases with healthy students as young as 2 years old to 18 year olds. We have also witnessed some of our most young, fit, and healthy teachers and employees become gravely ill over the past 2 months. This is a significant change from the beginning of the year, when many of our covid cases were asymptomatic. Something has changed.
With over 350 local employees, our campus is a cross-section of society in Addis. We are responsible first and foremost for the wellbeing of our students and employees and the education of our students.
We are not trying to “dodge” questions. All scenarios of our students and employees being on campus, (fewer numbers, alternate days, etc.) have been considered, but still pose a risk to our students and employees. Even if there were 20 students on campus at a time, there would still be a risk to those 20 students and the employees who are supporting and teaching them. If grade levels attended on alternate days, on the days students were on campus - those students and the teachers and employees supporting them would be at risk.
It has been interesting to see where we are compared to Kenya, and our sister school ISK. Kenya has recently imposed a lockdown with fewer cases, access to vaccines, and less overloaded medical facilities and a greater supply of oxygen than Ethiopia. ICS is doing its best to keep our students and employees safe by moving online.
We are constantly monitoring the situation in Addis and around the world. Looking at the trends of Covid over the past year, significant decreases in Covid rates happen after cities, states and countries, go into lockdown and mandate mask wearing. We are pleased with the Ministry of Health’s most recent action. However, we will continue to monitor the impact of these actions in Addis and Ethiopia.
Thank you again for reaching out. I hope you join the Parent Town Hall and hear more from Tim.