VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Jay Height:
Hi, Jay Height here at Shepherd Community. And it’s another busy week as we prepare for more food distributions, continuing to reach out to our families in all of their crisis and challenges and support them and and to work with them, to help them access the different programs that will help stabilize them. And we are continuing to help our families prepare for the new economy, helping prepare those for employment in the road to recovery.

Jay Height:
I wanted to take a moment this week, though, to share with you a little bit of what we’re doing to ensure as much as we can, the safety of our neighbors, our students, and our staff. They all matter to us and we’ve invested heavily and have reoriented how we do things here at Shepherd Community to ensure safety as much as we can.

Jay Height:
This year, we have purchased fogging machines so that we can every night go through all of our buildings and fog them to disinfect them. We are following the examples of some of our hospitals, and we appreciate Hendricks Community Hospital in advising us on the best ways we can ensure cleanliness as well as how we can best sanitize. We’ve hired a second janitor. We’re making sure that every two hours, every touch point in our building is being cleaned. These are things that were never an issue before COVID, but in this time of COVID, we want to make sure we are cleaning as much as we can.

Jay Height:
We’ve had to reset our buildings so we can split the classrooms and we’re redesigning our dining room and rec room so that we can have small classrooms in there. So that we’re splitting the students, that when they’re able to come on campus, that they will not be in one room that we’ll be able to social distance them in a couple of locations. We’ve shut down our drinking fountains and instead are giving bottled water and we appreciate all of those folks who are collecting bottled water for us and helping that get out to our students so that they can make sure that they’re staying hydrated and we’re doing it in a special way.

Jay Height:
We’ve invested a lot of money and we appreciate our partners at [Deem 00:02:20], who’ve made it possible to turn all of our bathrooms here at Shepherd Community, into touchless, whether it’s the toilets, the urinals, the sinks, the soap dispensers, the paper towel dispensers. We want to make it so that folks aren’t having to touch. They’re able to use the restrooms in as safe manner as possible. We have purchased, and we appreciate the state as well as the city, making PPE products available to us. We appreciate our partners at One Stop Marketing who have helped us secure more face shields, as well as face mask. We appreciate all the volunteers who have been making masks for us. We ask that you continue to do that. We’re getting them out to our neighbors. It’s a huge way for us to bless them and ensure their safety. And we want to make sure that the students have options to have face masks to wear.

Jay Height:
We are working on out school schedule so that students will come onsite Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Wednesday will be a deep cleaning day. The weekend will be deep cleaning, in addition to what we’re doing throughout the day, every day. We are working hard.

Jay Height:
We’re coordinating our school programs with the health department and listening to the health experts. So we’ve delayed opening the school, but we’re going to open whether we open with e-learning or onsite., We hope to, at some point, be able to have the students back onsite. We know that’s the best way possible. But we have made plans, our student ministries, our academy staff, have made plans on how we are going to invest in our students this school year to do as much as we can. Whether it’s during the school time or out of school time, to help them move forward and not go backwards.

Jay Height:
We have installed hand sanitizing stations, touchless ones throughout the building, so folks can always be having access to hand sanitizer. We’ve redesigned our kitchen. Students will eat in the classrooms that they’re educated in and so we’ve gotten some more equipment so that we can actually transport the food to them.

Jay Height:
I’m really excited about this. We’re installing a thermal imaging camera at the front of our building, that’ll go in this week, that will take the temperature of everyone walking in. If any of you have had the privilege of standing in line while someone’s taking a touchless thermometer and pointing it at your head and you’re waiting and they have to reset it and all that, this will help us be able to keep the flow of students and staff into the building, but making sure that no one has a temperature as they enter in.

Jay Height:
But we’re also going as far as, and we appreciate those who’ve made this possible, we are distributing to every family who is part of Shepherd Community, a touchless thermometer. Costs us about $60 to $70 a piece. Over 250 will be going into homes here in the near east side of Indianapolis. We appreciate those who made it possible for us to have those and to purchase those. Lots of lots of things that we’re doing that was different than we did a year ago. But it’s all the things that we need.

Jay Height:
We appreciate Dr. Charlie Miramonte, our medical advisor, who continues to speak into how we operate and the things we do. He’s a great friend and he’s been a great resource for us. We’re listening to a lot of people. We don’t have the answers, but we do have this. A commitment to making this the safest place we can for our students, for our staff, for our neighbors. And so things may look different if you show up on campus. We have different procedures on how we’re doing things. And we’re not satisfied that we’ve done enough. We’ll continue to listen to those advisors who give us more ideas and more ways that we can ensure the safety of our neighbors, students, and staff.

Jay Height:
And we appreciate your support. Continue to pray for us. Pray for our neighbors, pray for our state, our country. These are unprecedented days, but it’s days that I’m glad that we’re here, that we can invest in the lives of hundreds of students and their families. That we can invest in hundreds of families with food, with financial support, because of you. Thanks for the partnership, stay safe and have a great day.