Asheville City Schools’ back to school safety update

Press release from Asheville City Schools

Good afternoon students, staff and families. This is Ashley-Michelle Thublin, executive director of communications, with a back-to-school safety update.

First and foremost, I wanted to let you know that, per Senate Bill 654, the Asheville City Board of Education will be required to vote monthly on whether they would like to continue to require face coverings for all students and staff. Therefore, as part of these requirements, “face coverings” will be an item on the agenda of the Sept. 13 work session, and the board will be voting on it during the Sept. 20 regular meeting. And “face coverings” will be a standing item on meeting agendas for the foreseeable future.

I’m also writing to provide you with further clarification regarding confirmed positives, how confirmed positives are communicated and our quarantine/isolation procedures.

CONFIRMED POSITIVES: 

We’ve received a few questions from parents about what makes a case a “confirmed positive.”

• If a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19 with an at-home test kit that was NOT prescribed/ordered by a healthcare provider or from an at-home specimen collection kit that was sent to a lab for testing (like Pixel by LabCorp), Asheville City Schools is requiring a second test to confirm the diagnosis. The second test can be carried out by your local healthcare provider or at no charge at any Asheville City Schools facility. At-home tests that are not prescribed by a healthcare provider or sent to a lab are not acceptable testing results, per North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services guidelines.
• If a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19 with an Asheville City Schools rapid antigen test, we are not requiring them to receive a second positive test. Please know that Asheville City Schools is able to provide rapid antigen tests at school as part of a statewide program.  All tests that result in a positive diagnosis are reported to the state and to BCHHS.
• Students and/or their parents can provide Asheville City Schools with a positive test result from a local healthcare provider or certified testing site to allow for confirmation of a positive case.

As a reminder, if your child has been tested for COVID-19 and is waiting on their results, they should not come to school.

And if a student or staff member has tested positive for COVID-19, they are required to isolate. Per the StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit, Asheville City Schools will continue to follow the recommendations of our local public health department regarding quarantine for close contacts and isolation for positive cases.

COMMUNICATION ABOUT CONFIRMED POSITIVE

Our goal remains to provide you with accurate information as quickly as possible.

However, we want you to know that contact tracing only occurs for confirmed positive cases.

School administrators are also only able to notify families that a student in their child’s class has tested positive for COVID-19 after 1) a case has been confirmed and 2) close contacts have been identified.

We know that this can be very stressful for families, especially when information is shared amongst friends before the individual case can be confirmed.  However, the district must wait until a case has been confirmed to ensure the information we’re sharing is accurate.

In order to keep our staff and students as safe as possible, we ask that you continue to monitor your child for COVID-19 symptoms:

• Fever or chills
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Fatigue
• Muscle or body aches
• Headache
• New loss of taste or smell
• Sore throat
• Congestion or runny nose
• Nausea or vomiting
• Diarrhea

QUARANTINE PROCEDURES:

Additionally, we wanted to let you know about an update to our quarantine protocols.

In August, we provided you with different scenarios to support families if their child was in close contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19.  Since then, we have updated our decision because, now that students are back in our classrooms, we realize we cannot guarantee physical distancing as required for a shortened quarantine, although staff and students are maintaining as much physical distance as possible.

In collaboration with our MAHEC School Nurse Team, we have determined that:

• If your child IS NOT fully vaccinated and is identified as a close contact to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, they will be required to stay home from school and quarantine for 14 days. If your child is confirmed as a close contact, specific communication will be shared directly with your family, including the day your child can return to school.
  If your child is identified as a close contact and IS fully vaccinated, they can return to school the next day if they have no symptoms and are able to provide proof of vaccination.
  Out of an abundance of precaution, Asheville City Schools will handle all its quarantine/isolation protocols like this until further notice.

As always, we thank you for your support and understanding as we continue to keep our staff and students as safe and healthy as possible. The pandemic has shown us that change is the only constant we’re facing, which is why we’re continuing to modify our safety protocols to ensure we can maintain a healthy, in-person learning environment.