Dear Buxton Families,

Greetings from autumn central. The leaves are turning magnificent shades of red and orange, and when the fog rolls into our campus in the morning, it’s like living inside an impressionist painting. In fact, it is the perfect time for … Mountain Day! 

Yep, Monday was Mountain Day, once again organized by the senior class and exactly the kind of break from routine we needed. The students are doing a spectacular job of staying within this year’s unusual boundaries, but it was nice to be able to venture forth beyond our property and see some new vistas:

After the hike, the seniors ran a cookout and sponsored a movie, and everyone ended the day exhausted in the best possible way.

There are some other breaks from the routine happening at this time. After a brief uptick in COVID cases in our area the second week of school, things have settled down again, and we recently allowed day students to start “commuting” to and from school. We feel comfortable doing this for a few reasons: 1) our area is still extremely safe, and 2) our day students and their families have all agreed to live by a pretty restrictive set of rules. They know that having their kids go back and forth slightly increases our exposure level, but they are as invested as every other family in making sure Buxton is able to stay open for in-person learning all year. 

We will also be starting to allow families of boarders to start visiting campus this weekend! Hooray! Again, there are a lot of restrictions we are putting in place for these visits, so read carefully:

• Your visit must be coordinated with Lindsey at least 48 hours before your planned visit, (keeping in mind that Lindsey, although seemingly super-human, actually does not work nights or weekends). Why? So we can make sure we don’t have too many families on campus at any one time, AND so we can do appropriate contact tracing should there ever be a flare-up on campus.

 

• When you call to schedule your visit, we need to check whether the area (town, city, or county) you live in and/or work in has an infection rate of 8 cases/100K/day or lower.* You can check for that data here, or we can do that research for you and let you know if it is safe for you to visit.

 

[*Important note: This guideline may change as circumstances locally and in the country evolve over time. When you call or email to schedule a visit, we will update you if we have made such a change.]

 

• When you come, you must remain outside, masked, and distanced. We ask that you only see your child and not any other Buxton students. Although having a picnic might seem like a good idea, we ask that people bring special treats to leave with their kids rather than eating them together. Again: we want people to remain masked for their entire visit.

 

• We ask that you not drive your child anywhere or have them in your car.

 

• Feel free to hang out on the soccer fields, the porch at the back of the Library, the Clark trails, the cow paddies!

 

If we all follow these guidelines, we can do this safely! Thank you in advance for your cooperation!

My last message for today: The number-one way new families find Buxton is through word of mouth. The majority of our students heard about the school through a family member, friend, former teacher, neighbor, tutor, or someone else who had a relationship with Buxton and knew what a special little school it is. We are holding a virtual Open House on Monday, October 12, at 11:00 A.M., and we encourage all of our families to spread the word! Feel free to email Justina (admissions@buxtonschool.org) for more details; she would be happy to send invitations to all of your friends!

Looking forward to waving to you all from a distance!

All the best,

Franny