How are schools approaching quarantine?
Aug. 14—HARROD — Schools where masks are optional may also adopt more lenient quarantine policies to keep students in the classroom, as school districts search for new ways to avoid sending dozens home to quarantine each time a classmate develops COVID-19.
For Allen East schools, that means parents may have the option to send their children to school after they've been exposed to COVID-19, so long as the student is not symptomatic.
Allen East was one of the first school districts to confirm it will not require masks for the upcoming school year, doing away with several other COVID-related policies like mandatory seating charts.
According to the district's latest COVID-19 protocols, parents will still be notified when a student contracts the virus. But parents will also have the option to continue sending their child to school if the child is asymptomatic. In those cases, students will be subject to daily health checks by the school nurse and sent home if they develop a fever or other COVID-like symptoms.
The district is also asking parents to keep their children at home if they develop flu-like symptoms.
Like mask policies, quarantine and isolation protocols will vary by school district.
Some like Shawnee schools plan to revert back to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention's original quarantine policy, in which all students exposed to COVID-19 must quarantine if they are within six feet of the infected person for at least 15 minutes.
"If our choice is to not mask, we're really going to be following the protocol that was established September of last year," Jude Meyers, superintendent of Shawnee schools, told The Lima News earlier this month.
The CDC modified its quarantine recommendations earlier this year so that K-12 students may continue attending class unless they are symptomatic or were within three feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes, assuming all students and staff wear masks consistently. The rule only applied to exposures that happened within the classroom, where universal masking was the norm.
Others like Lima schools have opted to re-implement universal masking so students aren't asked to quarantine as often, a recurring problem last school year.
Allen County Public Health is encouraging schools to continue universal masking for now, given low vaccine uptake in the area. The highly contagious delta variant, now the dominant strain of coronavirus in Ohio, is another concern as schools get ready to begin a new year.
But the Ohio Department of Health and local health departments have limited authority this school year to require K-12 schools to implement masking rules or carry out CDC quarantine standards, giving schools a lot of leeway.
Still, only one in three Allen County residents is fully vaccinated and roughly half of all school-aged children are not eligible to be vaccinated, said Kathy Luhn, Allen County health commissioner. "So, that means two out of three are at risk for getting sick with the virus."
Luhn is pushing for a layered mitigation approach in schools: vaccination for those who are eligible; social distancing when possible; masking indoors; improved ventilation, cleaning and hygiene; and continued use of quarantine and isolation when students or staff contract COVID-19.
"Those are just standard public health measures to keep a contagious disease from spreading," Luhn said. She added: "The goal is (to develop) the safest environment we can so we can keep kids in school learning and limit the spread in schools, families and the community."
