COVID-19 Updates

Many of you have asked how Hilltop determines what policies we implement to keep our community safe and our school open for in-person learning during the pandemic. While Hilltop follows all the rules required by the state of Vermont, we often need to interpret them to some extent to apply them to our community. The Admin Team and the teachers have developed and adapted COVID guidance for the school for almost two years. To do so, Tamara Mount (our Head of School) has an additional team of advisors available to her. The HMS Covid-19 Advisory Committee consists of medical personnel, parents, and Board members. They review any significant policy and also are available to advise Tamara and the admin team as needed. The school also has on-call access to medical advisors under contract to Brattleboro Primary Care. We most often receive advice from their pediatricians Heather Lesage-Horton, MD, and Liz Richards, MD, who happen to be longstanding parents at HMS. Tamara can call on those two at any time. She also calls the Advisory Committee when time allows and/or a more significant policy needs to be discussed. These discussions have been through email, Google Docs, and Zoom calls. Sunday mornings are usually when the committee is available! Below is the COVID-19 advisory board members listed in alphabetical order:

• Juliette Carr is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and Registered Herbalist, and is a parent of two children currently enrolled at HMS. 
• Todd Fahey is the Vice President of Hospital Ambulatory Services at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, the Board Treasurer for HMS, and a current HMS parent.
• Mark A. Horton, MD, is an anesthesiologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene and a current HMS parent.
• Heather Lesage-Horton, MD, is a pediatrician at Brattleboro Primary Care Practice and a current HMS parent. She has been a medical advisor for HMS since before the pandemic.
• Ellie Pennell is a credentialed Montessori educator, camp director, and Board Chair for HMS. She is also a current HMS parent.
• Asher Pucciarello, LCMHC, is a mental health counselor at The Children and Parents Project, a member of the HMS Board, and a current HMS parent.
• Elizabeth Richards, MD, is a pediatrician at Brattleboro Primary Care Practice and a current HMS parent. She has been a medical advisor for HMS since before the pandemic.

Aid to Life – A straightforward advice based on Montessori principles that are easy to understand and apply

Talking to your child about COVID-19 – National Assocation of School Psychologists

How to Talk to Kids About Coronavirus – NY Times article

A Comic for Kids about COVID-19 – by NPR editor Malakra Gharib teaching early elementary children about coronavirus

Additional Online Learning Resources 

HMS is following the recommendations of state and federal government agencies, including the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Vermont Department of Health (VTDH), the Vermont Agency of Education (AOE), and the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to the best of our ability and with consideration for children’s ages and developmental stages.

By choosing to send your child to school, you are agreeing to possibly curtail other activities so as to keep our community safe. ​We ask families to stay informed and make safe personal choices, with the understanding that our whole school community must work together to stay safe and healthy. 

Hilltop Montessori School’s Re-Entry Plan was most recently updated in March, 2021. We have great appreciation for the staff, teachers, Board members, and parents who offered and helped to develop this plan. It is nimble and able to adjust to changing situations. 

It is the responsibility of our entire HMS community to protect the health and safety of our students, staff, families, and greater community. The following are three important areas that our parents must support to promote the health and well-being of the entire school community:

1. Please do not send your children to school if they are showing signs of illness. This is more important than ever before, and supports the State requirements. The VTDH requires that children do not come to school when feeling unwell or displaying any symptoms. Do not give a child fever-reducing medicine to reduce a fever and then send them to school. Parents must report if their child is experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms to the Front Desk on the day the symptoms first appear. P​lease read the current list of COVID-19 symptoms ​here.​
2. If a child is sick, they will be required to go home and will need to be picked up promptly (as soon as reasonably possible). ​A child showing symptoms will need to be isolated until picked up by a caregiver. Thus, we ask that parents ensure that a caregiver is readily available to come get a child if necessary on any given day. This means if a parent or guardian is out of town or unavailable for any reason, a secondary caregiver should be notified ahead of time and made aware of their responsibility to be available to pick up an ill child as promptly as possible, as well as notifying the Front Desk. We will be keeping a list of contacts for each child at the Front Desk. The student will be isolated, outside if weather permits, or inside in a well-ventilated room away from other students and with a staff person in appropriate PPE.
3. By choosing to send your child to school, you are agreeing to possibly curtail other activities so as to keep our community safe. ​You are required to comply with the changing Vermont State t​ ravel restrictions and guidelines​ in place. At this point, that means d​ o not go to a county with more than 400 cases/million people in the last two weeks of August.​ Please also do not excessively socialize with an extended group of people in a way that significantly increases your risk of exposure and/or makes contact tracing more challenging and extensive. We really want to be able to meet in person, and doing so successfully requires a commitment from everyone in the community to follow safety guidelines and exercise good judgement.
4. We have developed a for our community — parents and staff — to sign so that we all understand, and commit to, our responsibility in protecting our children, each other, and the community as a whole. We will require that parents and staff sign this agreement prior to the start of school.

We trust that our parents will comply and be forthcoming with information provided as part of the screening process, and will not bring children to school who have been given fever reducing medication. We also are requiring that families follow the guidelines for travel out of State​ in order to send their children to school.

Hilltop Montessori School has put together a handbook in an effort to translate both the sense of community that Hilltop provides, along with the academic and “whole child” offerings that are regularly given by our school. We are continuing to apply lessons learned from the spring experience to further improve the experience from home, should we be called upon to do that again.

HMS: Learning from Home Handbook