California
COVID-19 rules are changing in California schools: What parents should expect when class returns
COVID-19 case rates are ramping up as the school year ends, leaving many parents to wonder what their children will find when they return to class in the fall.
While Sacramento County’s case rate has shown early signs of leveling off, down about 3% in the past week, its positivity rate has continued to climb, growing from 10.3% to 13% in the same stretch.
“There are some early indications that there might be a slowdown, but it’s too early to tell,” county health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said on a Monday call with reporters. “We know that this most recent surge is caused by subvariants of omicron.”
Those subvariants are still infecting school children, and any kind of surge could trigger more mask mandates or other protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at schools.
Vaccine clinics are popping up at schools, too, to encourage families to vaccinate their school-aged children.
But overall, if there are no changes in the severity of COVID-19, parents can expect the same COVID policies that schools had in place at the end of the 2021-2022 school year: exposure notices, on campus vaccine clinics and very little physical distancing on campus.
What will the fall look like?
Local public health officials are watching the case rates and hospitalizations to determine what policies to implement in the 2022-2023 school year.
“If over the summer we see a new variant or increase in hospitalizations or death, and increase of severity, then we will more likely see a return of mitigation measures,” said Nick Mori, Sacramento County Public Health Program Planner.
Most schools no longer require masks. They’ve also moved away from requiring their employees to participate in contact tracing. Now they send general notices to families about possible exposures instead of identifying students and compelling them to quarantine.
Contact tracing “was incredibly labor intensive,” Mori said.
When the omicron variant emerged in the winter, schools moved to a group notification model: inform anyone who may have been exposed, and ask them to monitor for symptoms and get tested.
“Part of the reason of that shift was because omicron was moving through groups much quicker than other variants,” Mori said. “By the time you asked someone to quarantine, they already had it.”
Mori said ensuring student and staff safety while minimizing school disruption would be a balancing act in the fall. Students and staff who are sick in the upcoming year will still need to stay home. And districts will count on students testing for COVID-19 at home instead of on campus.
California distributes at-home COVID tests
“Testing remains a key mitigation layer to detect and curb transmission of COVID-19 in school settings,” the The California Department of Public Health said in a statement in May.
Nearly 80 million tests have been administered at schools, and about 32 million over-the-counter tests have been distributed to local schools, according to the state.
The state expects to prioritize over-the-counter test in the fall — rather than on-site antigen tests or PCR tests — as on-site school testing is likely to decrease in the fall.
The state plans to provide 15 million COVID-19 over-the-counter tests to all county offices of education for public and private schools in the next few months.
Sac City reinstates mask mandate. Could others?
Sacramento City Unified schools reinstated its mask mandate beginning last week after case rates began to spike, ending a two-month stretch in which students didn’t have to wear face coverings.
California lifted its statewide school mask mandate on March 12, although local districts can still to choose to require face coverings.
The Sacramento district recorded close to 1,100 virus cases among students in May, more than five times the total in the previous month. More than 240 staff members also tested positive for COVID-19 in May, nearly seven times the total in April.
Sacramento City Unified parent Shawnda Westly said the mandate came after weeks of parents had made pleas with the district to bring back the requirement. Westly helped launch a petition, along with 700 other parents, in May to reinstate the mask mandate after district schools experienced in uptick in COVID-19 cases.
“We are in a pandemic, and the board should be meeting through the summer,” Westly said. “How will we be prepared for a surge in the fall?”
Many parents spoke at school board meetings in May and June in support of a returned mandate.
On Thursday, Westly told board members she is concerned about another surge in the fall, and lifting a mask mandate over the summer could increase COVID-19 breakouts at schools.
“Without a mask mandate, teachers don’t have a leg to stand on to protect their own health and that of all the students in their class,” district parent Matt Van Zandt said in a written public comment to the school board.
If the COVID-19 case count and hospitalizations are high, mask mandates could return to additional mask mandates across the county.
The push for vaccines
California health officials also plan to expand school-based vaccination at more sites as eligibility continues to grow among younger age groups.
Currently, children age 5 and older are eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot.
It’s unclear whether COVID-19 protocols in K-12 settings will differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated students in the fall. The state health department highly recommends vaccines for school age children.
And while vaccines are authorized for children as young as 5 years old, Newsom has said he was waiting for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to give final approval to the vaccine for children before moving to require COVID-19 vaccines in schools. The state is not expected to require students to be vaccinated to attend class until July 2023 at the earliest.
Health officials are hopeful for a plateau in cases in the upcoming year.
“It evolves quite a bit and changes a lot,” Mori said of COVID-19. “As much as we like to predict what happens over the summer, this could be a curveball.”
Kasirye also said it’s too early to tell what will happen as time goes on.
“Our hope is that we’re getting to the peak of this current surge.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2022, 5:00 AM.
