Director’s message 60

THIS IS …. ISO!!

Special Note from the Director
RE: School Reopening on Monday, January 17th: 8:00 – 3:15/4:25 (Normal Full School Day)

January 13, 2022

Welcome to 2022!

We’ve made it – 2021 is finally behind us! It certainly has been a challenging time, but throughout this year, The International School of Ouagadougou has stepped up and lived our mission, vision, and values. During my first eighteen months here at ISO, I have been very proud of our students, teachers, parents and staff for demonstrating values such as resilience, creativity, confidence, and self-awareness. As a community, we came together some 18 months ago in August of 2020 to both ensure our students’ learning continued on our school site, and also, most importantly, to support each other during these difficult times.

As we enter 2022, we know that we will continue to face uncertain times. We know already that nothing will be “easy.” However, rather than being afraid of this uncertainty, this is an opportunity for us to prove that we truly are a community of learners who are (or will) acquiring the skills that will be needed to positively impact a rapidly changing world. Thank you to our entire community for your continued support and teamwork!

As we prepare to resume on-campus learning next week, we’d like to remind you of our updated policies regarding exposure to COVID-19:

  • Anyone who has been in close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case (and is not vaccinated) needs to self-quarantine for a period of 10 days before returning to school.
  • This means that if anyone in your household (including family members, household help, and any other extended family members or friends) has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been in contact with your student, then your student (if not vaccinated) should not return to school before 10 days have passed since the last contact with the person who tested positive. Approximately 7% of our students are vaccinated. If your student was vaccinated over the winter break, please inform our school nurse to help assist us with our contact tracing.

Of course the best mitigation is vaccination. To that effect, the United States Embassy has invited our community to a second vaccination drive on Saturday, January 29th. The vaccines that will be offered will be announced shortly, and we will be sure to keep you posted on additional details.

One of the reasons for the United States Embassy second vaccination drive is … – as I mentioned last week – that present health trends both here in Burkina Faso, and around the world, have worsened. Our goal is to ensure that we can offer a safe and appropriate learning environment to all our students who will physically be able to return to campus on Monday. We know that eight of our students presently have COVID and several of them have not been able to return back to Burkina Faso. We also have two teachers who are COVID-positive, and we anticipate one will be back on Monday.

As already mentioned, conditions regarding recent health trends created by the Omicron variant — both worldwide and here in Burkina Faso — have not improved over the break. We are therefore sending some quick reminders of some of our protocols to our community:

  • Wearing face masks
  • Having extra masks here at school
  • Respecting social distancing
  • Washing hands/using hand sanitizer often

Our updated protocols are being worked on, and should be ready no later than Monday.

We do note, and appreciate, your assistance in following our school policies, as we seek to continue to provide safe, on-campus learning.

Thank you again for your unwavering support.

Jeff Trudeau
Director