Dear Shelby Families,
As you may have seen in the media the past several days, the CDC has released new guidelines for quarantine periods. Incidentally, there have been many questions asked about how these new guidelines will affect staff and students at Shelby City Schools. This is something that we have discussed with Shelby Public Health, as well as Richland Public Health to ensure that we are doing what is best for the individuals in our school system and in our community.
At this time, we have made the determination that we will be following specific aspects of CDC’s new guidelines for quarantine. We will continue to advise that the 14 day quarantine with exposure to a COVID19 positive individual will be the gold standard recommendation. This is the option that has been in place from the beginning of the school year. It involves quarantining from your last date of contact with a positive individual during their infectious period, starting on day 1 of your contact and ending with your release from quarantine after completing the 14th day of quarantine, on day 15. However, we recognize, as the CDC does, that this can place a hardship on families and is not always the most feasible option. Due to this fact, we will also be utilizing the 10 day quarantine option recommended by the CDC at this time. This involves the same guidelines as the 14 day quarantine, but with a stipulation for shortening the quarantine. It would start with day 1 of contact with an infected individual, and you would be released from quarantine after completing day 10 of quarantine, on day 11. If using the 10 day quarantine, the individual would need to:
- Wear a mask at all times around other people.
- Maintain a six foot distance from other individuals at all times until the completion of day 14.
- Also, in order to complete only a 10 day quarantine, the individual must have been completely asymptomatic up to day 10.
If any symptoms of COVID19 are present, the individual must continue the full 14 day quarantine and may need to seek further medical consultation before returning to normal activities. With the 10 day quarantine, please note that your child’s school day may change in several ways during days 11-14. They will not be permitted to ride the bus during this time, as there is no way to properly distance them from their classmates. Also, your child will sit apart from their classmates during lunchtime, and will be separated in the classroom to adhere to the six foot distancing guideline.
These are the quarantine guidelines we have chosen to implement in the Shelby City Schools at this time. They are not anything of our own design, these guidelines are CDC recommended, and implementation has been discussed with our local and county health departments, deciding what is most feasible for use in our school system. As previously stated, 14 days is still the preferred standard and what we would first encourage. Thank you for your continued understanding and cooperation with our efforts to keep the spread of COVID-19 to a minimum and keep both students and staff safe during these difficult times.
Respectfully,
Tim Tarvin
Superintendent, Shelby City Schools
