As much as we’ve been hoping not to have to make any changes, with the recent upsurge in COVID cases, the CDC is now recommending that all individuals wear a mask while indoors, regardless of vaccination status. To protect the safety of our students, staff, and families, as well as our ability to continue offering our current classes and programs, we’ll be following these recommendations and will require all students, staff, and visitors to wear a mask while in the MPK building, beginning Monday, August 9, regardless of vaccination status.

We’re hopeful that this is for the short term, and we plan to reassess the situation within a couple of weeks. This isn’t the announcement we’d hoped to make, but we’re experienced with karate in masks, and we’ve proven we can make it work. There are no other changes at this point — it’s our plan to continue offering the same great classes on our current schedule.

As always, if students or families are experiencing symptoms of any sort, please stay home until you’re symptom-free and, if you’ve had any exposure to COVID at all, please remain home until you’re certain you’re negative for the virus. We’ll continue to keep you updated as any changes come up.

Thanks for your patience and for taking the necessary steps to protect everyone in the MPK family.

This is just a quick reminder that we will be closed on Saturday, July 3, for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. We won’t have kickboxing class or stripe testing that day.

We will be back on Monday, July 5, for summer camp and evening classes.

Now that the masking policy has relaxed and things are slowly returning to normal, we do want to mention something avoid any confusion:

• We ask that students who are not feeling well please stay home and get better instead of coming to class. If you have a fever, chills, a cough, a sore throat, nasal congestion, or other symptoms, please wait for it to clear up before coming to class.

We know this has been a given for the past year, but as we have done in the past, we continue to ask this of our students even during more normal times.

We love to see you all, and karate is a ton of fun, but it’s not fun for students who have those symptoms, and it’s not fun for our instructors and other students who want to stay healthy.

Thank you all so much, and we look forward to seeing you in class!