Dear Good Shepherd Families,

As many of you know, the CDC and Dallas County have updated their mask guidance. Dallas County is now “Mask Optional” with a few exceptions. The school has updated the following protocols effective immediately.

Mask Optional Protocol:
Effective immediately, all Good Shepherd Episcopal School and PDO students as well as adults will exercise their own option to wear a mask while on campus. The protocol applies to all situations, including times when grade levels are mixed and bus transportation. 

We understand some may want to continue masking. Health officials have reported data showing those who wear the higher quality masks known as N95 respirators have a significant degree of protection even if others are not wearing masks. Please discuss with your child your wishes for his/her masking. Teachers will continue to monitor appropriate and supportive conversations about each persons’ choice for masking. 

Please note Good Shepherd students, faculty/staff, and parents should be respectful of any Good Shepherd events occurring off campus and adhere to COVID-19 protocols in place at that location (i.e. athletic events at neighboring schools, airports, etc.).

Contact Tracing Update:
In our previous edition of Our Future is Strong, we updated the contact tracing protocols for students in Kindergarten through Eighth grade. For these students, we have limited contact tracing to household exposures and have suspended additional contact tracing procedures. We will continue this new contact tracing  process and extend it to our Prekindergarten and PDO students. Because some of these young students are unable to be vaccinated, we will notify the Prekindergarten and PDO families any time an individual in their child’s class tests positive for COVID-19. If you receive an email notification, your child may opt into a voluntary quarantine (currently seven days) and students in Prekindergarten and above will be offered distance learning for the time they are quarantined. 

We will continue to monitor cases and further changes in the pandemic requiring adjustments to this policy. 

As always, you may check the school’s COVID-19 dashboard for real-time information on active COVID-19 cases across the school. You can always check our COVID-19 Protocols webpage for the most current protocols.  

“Our Future Is Strong” is a series of brief, informative emails/posts which began April 30, 2020 to keep the community informed about our preparations for our return to campus and the ways we will live together as a community during the pandemic. “Our Future Is Strong” will continue periodically on an as-needed basis. We have also posted this series on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) section of our website for your reference.  

Together we are #gsesStrong, 

Julie McLeod, Ph.D.
Head of School