Some Idaho schools have strict quarantine policies. Others leave it to the parents
Selina Paul received multiple emails in one week from the Kuna School District telling her that her kids may have been exposed to COVID-19.
But the emails don’t tell parents in the district, where masks are not required, to quarantine their children. They let parents know their child may have been exposed, tell them to watch for symptoms, and let them choose whether to keep their children home or continue sending them to school.
On the other side, the Boise School District follows a strict quarantine policy, using guidance from public health departments to be sure students who were exposed in certain situations are healthy before allowing them to return to school.
Other school districts don’t even let parents know when their child may have been exposed.
Across the Treasure Valley, school districts are taking vastly different approaches to their quarantine policies. While some are strictly following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Central District Health and Southwest District Health, others are tweaking the guidance, and some are offering little guidance at all.
Health officials have warned that schools without mask mandates — which have become a big source of tension for school boards — are more likely to have outbreaks. Many districts without quarantine policies also aren’t requiring masks. At the same time, COVID-19 cases have been rising among youngsters.
“The lack of consistency, the lack of following basic science guidelines … if we would follow those clearly, we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now,” Dr. David Peterman, pediatrician and the CEO of Primary Health Medical Group, told the Idaho Statesman.
What do quarantine policies look like across the Treasure Valley
In the Boise School District, which requires masks, officials are contact tracing and enforcing quarantines for students who were exposed. The district is following guidance from the CDC and Central District Health.
If a person is exposed to the virus in an instructional area, and both the person infected and the person exposed were wearing a mask at the time, the contact would not need to quarantine from school or extracurricular activities if they didn’t have symptoms. That person would have to continue wearing a mask and monitoring for symptoms.
If a person was exposed to the virus in a non-instructional setting, such as before or after school or at extracurricular activities, then that person, if unvaccinated, would have to quarantine.
For people who are vaccinated and exposed to the virus who don’t have symptoms, the policy advises they get tested at least three days after exposure and wear a mask indoors in public. If a person isn’t vaccinated, and is exposed in a setting where they aren’t wearing a mask, they have to quarantine.
The Caldwell School District, which is requiring masks through Oct. 14, is taking a similar approach. The district is contact tracing and notifying families of possible exposures in school, and then following the guidance from health districts for quarantine policies, said Jessica Watts, communications director for the district.
In the West Ada School District, the policy is that students who are exposed to the virus while wearing a mask and/or vaccinated don’t have to quarantine from school and other activities, regardless of whether the student infected was masked, but they would have to wear a mask for the next 10 days and monitor for symptoms. Students who aren’t masked would have to quarantine if they were exposed.
Currently, all students in West Ada are required to wear masks in the classroom, but the district previously allowed parents to opt their kids out of the requirement.
Other districts, such as Nampa, are not requiring anyone to quarantine.
The district isn’t contact tracing, except for employees, as its nursing staff is already overwhelmed as it is, said Kathleen Tuck, the director of communications and community relations in the district.
“If we had to go back to contact tracing for all of our students right now, we don’t have the bandwidth,” Tuck told the Statesman.
But the district is sending out emails to parents after their kids were potentially exposed to the virus. Those emails tell parents they may want to “take precautions,” Tuck said.
“But we don’t require anything,” she said, in terms of quarantining.
In Kuna, the district is also “striving” to notify families when their student is potentially exposed to COVID-19, said Allison Westfall, the communications director for the district. But the district isn’t contact tracing, she said.
“We do not have the staff to support this responsibility of the health department,” she said in an email.
According to the district’s decision tree, if a student was possibly exposed to the virus in school, parents have two options: monitor their child for symptoms as they continue to attend school and quarantine if symptoms develop, or have their child quarantine for 10 days.
If someone in the district has symptoms, they can take a PCR test or isolate for 10 days. That guidance changes depending on spread within the city. If there is less spread, people with symptoms can return to school once they have not had a fever for 24 hours without medication and they’ve had improved symptoms, according to the district’s decision tree.
The Emmett School District has a similar policy. Parents are notified if someone in their child’s classroom tested positive for the virus and then can choose whether to quarantine or just monitor for symptoms.
“Often, we’re sending students home for 10 days when they are perfectly healthy, and then we require them to have a negative test result if they want to return early,” Emmett Superintendent Craig Woods said in a news release last month. “It makes it even more challenging for parents because it’s hard to get appointments for testing.”
At Vallivue, the district isn’t notifying parents if their child is exposed to someone who tests positive for the virus in most cases — unless the percent of people testing positive in the specific school reaches 3%. For schools where 0-3% of people have tested positive for the virus, the district posts on its website either the number of cases reported in the school over a two-week period, or what grades cases were reported in.
‘Causing confusion’
The differing guidelines from school boards are confusing and creating a complicated situation out of what could be straightforward, Peterman said. Historically, schools and counties have relied on health departments to give guidance about diseases that are contagious or cause major harm, he said.
He used the example of whooping cough. There have at times been cases of whooping cough in schools or day-care centers in Idaho. Under those circumstances, the health department would identify the case, identify who was exposed and give very specific advice schools would follow, Peterman said.
“I’m unaware of ever there being any protest over the closing or testing or recommendations of medication for a whooping cough problem in our community,” he told the Statesman. “So we have a standard approach.”
But that’s not what happened with the coronavirus.
“We are now relying on every different school district in Idaho to come up with its own rules. That is causing confusion,” he said. “When you have different rules for every different school district, it’s not surprising that coronavirus just continues to spread.”
The delta variant can spread rapidly in schools, and multiple studies have shown that mitigation efforts work, he said.
The answer, he said, is simple: Schools need to follow guidance from health departments. Those include masking, distancing when possible and encouraging hand washing. When schools identify a person who has the virus or anyone experiencing symptoms, they should be pulled out of school, he said.
Schools will have exposures, but if everyone is masked, he said, students who were exposed can stay in class unless they have symptoms.
School boards should be aware of keeping kids safe, he said. But ultimately, on the coronavirus, schools should be turning to health departments for “sound advice that is consistent throughout our state.”
“And that’s not what we’re doing,” he said.
Dr. Mark Borup, a physician from Saint Alphonsus Health System, said that if schools aren’t quarantining close contacts, they’re missing a chance to slow virus spread.
“One of the things we know about coronavirus is that you can have spread of the coronavirus even before you are symptomatic, and in some people, that can even be the time when you are most contagious,” he said.
Contact tracing is also important in a school setting, he said.
“The value of contact tracing is that you can hopefully get ahead of it,” he said, “otherwise the virus is 10 steps ahead.”
The response from parents
Parents in districts across the Treasure Valley have been pushing for different quarantine policies, with some supporting those letting them choose whether to quarantine their children and others warning the virus could spread even more if students who are exposed don’t stay home.
In the West Ada School District, a group of parents has come out against the district’s policy that allows for different options for students who mask and those who don’t.
Parents have said the policy is segregating kids and is meant to incentivize students to wear masks in the classroom. Many parents posted comments on the West Ada Parents Association website calling for a change to the policy that would prevent students from having to stay home from school if they were healthy.
But parents in other districts with less strict or no quarantine policies are worried about the virus spreading, and about families not keeping their kids home when they’re exposed to the virus — or even when they’re sick.
Parents whose kids are immunocompromised are especially worried.
“A big fear of ours is the parents out there that don’t believe in the masks … or just feel that this is just another seasonal cold, aren’t going to take the precautions to see if their child has COVID,” said Amanda Herrity, a parent in the Kuna School District.
Herrity, whose son in kindergarten has a rare health condition and has undergone chemotherapy for years, is quarantining him after being notified he may have been exposed at school. She said she wants to make sure that if he does have the virus, he isn’t spreading it to anyone else.
But it doesn’t seem like the district is making an effort to prevent the spread of the virus in school, she said.
Paul, whose 9-year-old son has asthma and has had pneumonia about 25 times in his life, had been voluntarily quarantining her son after being notified he may have been exposed in the classroom. But she’s worried other parents won’t do the same, putting more kids at risk. And she’s concerned the district isn’t doing anything to fix it.
“We’ve lost sight of what’s important, and it’s our children,” she said, “keeping them safe and healthy.”
