08/05/2020
New partitions will help keep students safe
Aug 3 2020 1:37 PM
Teams have been working through the summer to implement plans structured at keeping children safe and healthy in preparation for an Aug. 17 return to school amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the measures taking place are the installation of physical partitions which will assist in dividing class sizes into smaller groups to support social-distancing and infection control protocols.
In the Montessori School, partition walls in the library and early education classrooms will allow toddler classes to be divided into groups of six children, and age 3-6 classes to be separated into groups of nine. These full-length walls of translucent, corrugated plexiglass allow students and teachers to be able to see the entire classroom while preserving the flow of natural light.
Jimmy’s company, Queen City Polymers (QCP), manufactures, stocks and distributes materials across North America. At the beginning of the pandemic, Jimmy and QCP had been making plastic shields and donating them to places more heavily impacted by the crisis like New York, but since the need for partitions is now so widespread, they have been doing a lot more work in the Cincinnati area to try to mitigate the risks to COVID-19 locally.
“I’ve been in a lot of area schools and businesses doing this type of work," Jimmy, who is also a former teacher with a six-year tenure of teaching English in China, said. "Being back at The Summit, seeing the space, former teachers and old high school friends who have grown up – the feeling of nostalgia just made me realize that I had a really good childhood, and I’m really lucky to have gone to The Summit and to be a Summit alum.”
Jimmy’s company will be providing smaller partitions in Lower, Middle and Upper School areas where students cannot be appropriately physically distanced -- including dividers in the Upper School library, table separators and other kinds of barriers in common areas. The partitions will allow students to safely sit at tables together to fully engage the learning process occurring in the classroom.
In science laboratories, specially cut plexiglass is being prepared to allow students to collaborate with the plexiglass between them.
“Like all schools, we’ve had to scramble to make The Summit environment as safe as possible before we open for our entire enrollment on Aug. 17,” said Head of School Rich Wilson. “Jimmy and his company were attentive to our needs and gave us great service. We graduate leaders of character, and Jimmy displays that characteristic.”
