Student absence and safety protocols.

This year in accordance with safety guidelines we are asking all parents, students, staff, and teachers to strictly follow all COVID-19 illness and safety guidelines. We have listed the symptoms below but we are asking all students to stay at home if they show any cold or flu-like symptoms, if they have a fever or if they have traveled in the past 14 days. We are also asking our teachers to follow these same protocols and we are asking our teachers to remain isolated for 10 days or until they have a negative result from a COVID-19 test should they show any symptoms. We recognize that with these protocols in place we expect an increased number of student and teacher absences.

As a solution when a student or is absent due to illness the lesson please give us a call to inform us and your teacher but the lesson will temporarily be transitioned into a virtual on-line lesson in their regularly scheduled time slot. Our online classes were very successful and we believe our teachers can deliver a very successful and valuable class to their students in an online format. Students will not lose their in-person class and they are encouraged to return to their in-person class once they are healthy or have completed their 14-day quarantine period. If the student is simply too ill to attend the class virtually we do encourage parents to utilize the lesson time with a lesson for themselves or a sibling or to utilize the time as a parent-teacher interview for an update on their child progress and helpful tips on how to improve their child success.

In order to minimize general contact numbers, we will not be hiring substitute teachers this year. If a teacher is absent for any reason the lessons will temporarily be transitioned into a virtual on-line lesson in the students regularly schedule day and time. We will do our best to provide as much notice to the students so they can attend their lessons virtually from the comfort of their own home. Students and teachers will be encouraged to return to their in-person classes once the teacher is healthy or they have completed a 10-day quarantine period. Should the teacher be too ill to teach on their regularly scheduled day and time they will provide a make-up class at a time that is mutually convenient.

We do ask that students and teachers be prepared to transition temporarily to online classes at any time in the case of any absence by a student or teacher or any unforeseeable incident that may prevent in-person classes.

Our hope is with these measures in place we can both protect our student’s staff and community from the spread of any disease as well as maintaining the consistency and continuity of our music classes.

In accordance with Alberta guidelines we are asking students and teachers to remain and home if:

Symptoms

COVID-19 symptoms can be mild and are similar to influenza and other respiratory illnesses.

• Common symptoms: cough, fever (over 38°C), shortness of breath, runny nose or sore throat.
• Other symptoms can include: stuffy nose, painful swallowing, headache, chills, muscle or joint aches, feeling unwell in general, new fatigue or severe exhaustion, gastrointestinal symptoms (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or unexplained loss of appetite), loss of sense of smell or taste, conjunctivitis (pink eye).

Symptom of serious illness: difficulty breathing or pneumonia.

Self Isolate

Under public health order, you are legally required to isolate for:

• 14 days if you returned to or entered Alberta from outside Canada or are a close contact of a person with COVID-19, plus an additional 10 days from the onset of symptoms, should they occur
• 10 days if you have a cough, fever, shortness of breath, runny nose, or sore throat that is not related to a pre-existing illness or health condition

Thank you for understanding and keeping our community safe.