The Health Department believes that there are serious consequences for children and families when schools are only doing virtual learning. Research has shown this has led to a loss of educational opportunity as well as serious impacts on mental health and increased risk of other negative health consequences.
In order to ensure that schools can be safe environments during the COVID pandemic, the Health Department has developed a number of protocols that decrease the risk to students and staff. If everyone follows this guidance, we may not be able to keep all COVID cases out of schools, but we can make schools significantly safer.
- All students and staff should be screened for COVID symptoms before they enter the school. If anyone is feeling sick, they must stay home.
- All students and staff must wear masks while in school, except for while eating or drinking.
- All students and staff must abide by the Health Department’s isolation and quarantine guidance and report any positive COVID test results to the school.
- Schools should try to increase ventilation throughout the building.
- Students and staff should try to maintain physical distance from each other.
The Health Department is working with the School District, Archdiocese, private, and charter schools to know how many people in a school are positive for COVID. Depending on the who and how many people have COVID, the Health Department may recommend a quarantine or even a “pause.”
Any students or staff who are fully vaccinated don’t need to quarantine if they are exposed to a positive COVID case, provided they don’t have symptoms and they should get tested five to seven days later.
However, unvaccinated staff and students must quarantine if they are exposed to a positive COVID case. That quarantine will last for 10 days, or they can return after seven days with a negative test taken on days five, six, or seven.
If a student tests positive for COVID, the eight children sitting directly around them would be asked to quarantine, unless they are fully vaccinated. Imagine a tic-tac-toe board with the positive case in the middle square, and the eight people who may be asked to quarantine sitting in each of the other tic-tac-toe squares.
If a classroom has three or more positive cases, the entire classroom would be asked to pause, and would be closed for up to ten days.
If there are two or more classrooms or six cases in the same grade, the Health Department may recommend that the entire grade pause in-person learning and would be closed for up to ten days.
If there are three or more grades paused, or more than 3% of the entire school population has tested positive, the Health Department may recommend that the entire school pause in-person learning and would be closed for up to ten days.
Remember: fully vaccinated staff and students can continue in-person learning if quarantining due to one or two cases unless they have symptoms!
If you want your child to continue to be safe and continue to receive in-person education, get them fully vaccinated as soon as possible.
