Health Policy:
Following the health & safety rules set by the state government, we must limit the number of students that can be in each dance studio for a class. Keeping social distance in our small lobby and dressing room will be very challenging, which is why masks are required at all times in our building, and why we will be asking parents to pick up and drop off our older students outside our building whenever possible.
Student must NOT attend dance class if he/she can answer YES to any of the following conditions;
- The student or a household member is experiencing any symptom of illness such as Fever, Chills, Shaking with chills, Cough, Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, Flu-like symptoms including GI upset, fatigue, body aches, muscle pain, Headache, Sore throat, or New loss of taste or smell.
- The student or a household member has traveled out of state, or internationally, within the last 14 days.
- The student or a household member has been exposed to a suspected positive or confirmed positive case of coronavirus/COVID-19 within the last 14 days.
- The student or a household member has been diagnosed with coronavirus/COVID-19 and not yet cleared as non-contagious by health officials.
Sanitation Procedures:
For air quality, we have purchased Medify medical grade HEPA air filtration units for each studio and the lobby that are rated to completely change the air every 30 minutes and whose filter will remove particles to .1 micron.
For sanitation we have installed a no-touch hand sanitizer dispenser in the lobby, between the two studio doors, to be used by each student before and after their class, and a no-touch dispenser for the bathroom soap. All contact surfaces will be sanitized with approved disinfectants between classes and at the end of day.
Physical Distancing Procedures:
Students/Staff/Visitors will wear masks during dance class, as well as in the lobby, hall, etc. We will maintain 6 ft distancing in class even when going across the floor.
Most of our classes are also available via Zoom, to be taken at the same time as the Live classes.
We understand that some students may want online classes only, and some will want Live in-studio classes. To be fair to all who want Live classes and to follow the required classroom size limits, we will probably need to use a hybrid “cohort A /cohort B” plan for our older students who are in the dance levels where we only offer only one class of that level per week. This means that a percentage of the registered students will take the class Live in the studio one week, and then take class by Zoom at home on another week, while the other cohort that was at home on Zoom comes to the Live in-studio class, etc. The cohorts will continue in this way as long as this is necessary.
This seems to be a do-able way to return to dance Live - the way that we all love it! - and keep our students’ exposure to others at a lower level. Note that we have arranged the schedule so that Zoom is not necessary for our lower level students. These students should be able to take Live dance class every week, because we will offer at least one weekday class AND one Saturday class for each of our dance levels “Primary” through “level 3”. If we fill each of these classes to the capacity of the room, all these students can have a Live class each week, with no need to “cohort”, however, synchronously taking these classes only by Zoom is also available.