Students in Indiana schools may no longer be asked to quarantine if they come into contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19.
The Indiana State Department of Health extended new guidance for school quarantines Wednesday that could significantly reduce the number of students asked to stay home if they're identified as a close contact to someone else who has tested positive for the virus, and multiple Michiana school districts are already embracing the new recommendations.
The policy applies to schools where mask requirements are “consistently followed throughout the day,” according to state officials. And, these schools will still be required to contact trace positive cases and communicate with their local health department, as well as parents, teachers and staff.
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The School City of Mishawaka and Penn-Harris-Madison schools, which have quarantined hundreds of students in their first weeks of school, contacted families within 24 hours of the order, inviting some of their students who meet criteria of the new guidance to return to school this week.
Mishawaka and P-H-M are among dozens of Indiana school districts that reversed mask-optional policies after seeing high numbers of students test positive for COVID-19 as students returned to class this fall.
School officials in South Bend say they are currently reviewing the state’s recommendations, pending conversations with local health officials.
St. Joseph County’s deputy health director did not immediately respond to a request for an interview Thursday. The department, along with hundreds of health care providers in the region, has been vocal in its support for universal masking in schools. The CDC is still assessing data on whether fully vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections can transmit the virus, according to its website.
“Before we make any changes to any of our processes, we always make sure that we get the input from local health officials, that includes the department of health, physicians, principals, other groups,” said Brandon White, assistant superintendent of academics for South Bend schools. “We make our decisions or changes based on our COVID procedures in a collaborative setting looking at all of the factors.”
Changing guidance comes amid quarantine surge
The new guidance comes with a series of conditions which must be met to avoid quarantine.
Students, teachers and staff identified as close contacts may return to school only if the person who tested positive and their close contacts were masked at the time of their interaction. Close contacts must not be showing any symptoms of COVID-19, such as developing a cough, shortness of breath or loss of taste or smell, and should be asked to self monitor for those symptoms — including with twice daily temperature checks.
If symptoms develop, including a temperature of 100.4 F or above, close contacts should isolate and take a COVID-19 test.
The guidance applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated students and staff — a key detail considering only 28.1% of 12 to 15 year olds and 38.3% of 16 to 19 year olds are fully vaccinated.
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But, families shouldn’t expect school quarantines to end entirely.
The state health department’s guidance only applies in classroom settings, so any exposure identified during school lunches, on bus rides, during athletic events or in extracurricular activities, for example, could still send students and staff home for seven to 14 days depending on a school’s policy for returning to class.
Buses have yielded the highest number of close contacts so far at P-H-M, said Lucha Ramey, a spokeswoman for the district. Others say they’ve seen an even mix of contact tracing across classrooms, athletics, lunch rooms, recess and more.
In his letter to families this week, P-H-M Superintendent Jerry Thacker said the district has received approval from the county health department to reduce contact tracing on buses from six feet to three feet because of a federal order requiring masks on public transportation.
The recommendations for quarantine provide incentive for schools to keep up with their indoor mask policies.
Most schools across St. Joseph County have now adopted these policies after coronavirus cases and quarantines spiked in the first weeks of school in districts like Mishawaka and P-H-M, which were initially mask optional.
In Mishawaka, 10 staff and more than 100 students have tested positive since students’ first day, Aug. 11. Over 470 students and staff are in quarantine so far this week, according to data available on the district’s website Thursday afternoon. The district had 676 out on quarantine last week — or more than 11% of its total in-person population of 6,000 students, teachers and staff.
P-H-M, a much larger district of nearly 11,500 students, has had more than 100 of its students test positive and more than 500 identified as close contacts this year.
Ramey said 13 of the student positives occurred before the district’s first day, Aug. 18, and so far, none of the total 105 positives reported by the end of the day Tuesday had developed from transmission in school.
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“We have 507 close contacts,” Ramey said Wednesday. “Only six of those have tested positive, but they are not school based. They were close contacts to their parents.”
South Bend, which started its school year Aug. 11 with a mask requirement, had about 100 of its more than 16,000 students on quarantine this week.
“It does make you wonder, ‘did our mask mandate at the start of school have any impact on us having lower quarantine numbers?’” White said when considering higher quarantine rates in some schools that opened without a requirement. “I can’t say that for certain, because I don’t know, but it is interesting to see that.”
The state guidance, however, is just that — guidance — so schools can choose to adopt the new recommendations or continue with their current practices.
White said leaders in the South Bend school corporation meet on Fridays to discuss COVID-19 policies and would be discussing new guidance at that time.
“We keep trying to ensure the best we can the health and safety of our students,” White said. “But we also know that educating students is our top priority.”
Reducing quarantines a focus to address learning loss
The new state guidance, if adopted locally, could ease the burden on schools looking to maximize in-person learning this year.
Districts like Mishawaka and P-H-M have done away with virtual learning options and are instead treating quarantine absences more like they did extended absences before the pandemic.
Rather than watching a livestream from home as some did last year, students are now being asked to log into learning management systems like Google Classroom and Canvas to find assignments to complete in their own time.
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“They’re basically doing work as they would if their family was going on vacation or they fell and broke their arm,” Ramey said.
This style of asynchronous learning, also being exercised in South Bend and Mishawaka schools, helps relieve some of the burden placed on teachers last year who were expected to navigate in-person, virtual and hybrid learning.
Unlike Mishawaka and P-H-M, the South Bend district continues to offer a fully virtual option to families through its South Bend Virtual School and is exploring partnerships with external vendors that could provide live virtual instruction to its quarantined students.
P-H-M schools are boosting support for quarantined students through virtual office hours with teachers and peer tutoring. And schools across the county are ensuring students of all ages have access to technology at home.
But, the shift back to asynchronous learning for quarantined students, also comes as teachers push to remediate and accelerate learning after 18 months of instability, which is no easy task given new layers of uncertainty cast by the highly contagious delta variant.
Educators say they’re best able to build connections and promote a productive learning environment with students in classrooms. Schools across the country grappled with chronic absences among students who mentally or physically checked out during periods of remote learning.
“Accumulating that level of loss of instructional days, even when you’re doing your absolute best is of concern, and should be of concern, to any parent or any educator,” Mishawaka’s assistant superintendent Sarah Hickle said in an interview before the state issued its new guidance. “We do as many things proactively to minimize the quarantines. That’s where our time and energy has been focused.”
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