Have additional questions not answered below? Email [email protected] and a member of the leadership team will get back to you.
Classrooms with a positive pooled test or an individual student or teacher who tests positive will immediately quarantine for 7 days. The school will then encourage families to seek individual PCR testing at a local community testing facility for each student to identify whether their child may have been infected. Additionally, Bertschi will require that every student demonstrate proof of a negative test 5 days after the start of the quarantine in order to return to campus. Any student with COVID-19 is required to quarantine for 10 days after the start of symptoms, after at least 24 hours have passed since a fever has resolved, and after symptoms have improved. If asymptomatic, a student is still required to quarantine for 10 days.
For more details, see Seattle & King County Public Health COVID-19 Symptom Flow Chart.
Additionally, from a programmatic standpoint quarantining the entire class allows us to immediately transition all students to distance learning with their classroom teacher. We will not have the staffing this year to support robust in-person and distance learning programs concurrently. As such, quarantining the entire class best supports individual students and our pedagogical and equity goals for our program.
No, siblings who do not have symptoms do not need to be quarantined or sent home, but a child with symptoms should be isolated, sent home and tested for COVID-19 as soon as possible.
Siblings and other family members of a child with symptoms should monitor their health and, if any symptoms arise, they should stay home from school or child care and be tested for COVID-19 as soon as possible.
If the child from the positive classroom cohort takes an individual test and is positive for COVID-19, that child must stay home and isolate. At that time siblings would be considered close contacts and must also quarantine.
Details here at King County DOH guidelines for K-12 schools.
We recognize that offering after school programming is crucial for many of our families who count on this service to keep their children in school while balancing jobs and the other demands of their personal lives. These services to parents are a key component of our core value of diversity, equity and inclusion and an essential part of our program.
We also feel comfortable we can offer this program safety for all of our students. During Extended Day, students will be in outdoor spaces. The only exception is for students from the same classroom during the regular school day. Mixing of grade levels will be limited to outdoor spaces. Clubs will mix grades and also be limited to outdoor spaces.
The WA DOH defines student close contact in K-12 schools as at least 15 cumulative minutes over a 24-hour period within 3 feet of an infected student indoors if both students are wearing masks and other prevention strategies are in place (WA DOH K-12 Requirements 2021-2022, pages 10-11). Students will be masked at all times and ED and club teachers will be particularly mindful of the same distancing, hand washing and sanitizing protocols in place during the regular school day. Safe Schools has discussed ED and clubs at length and feels comfortable that we can offer this programming while ensuring the safety of our students and staff.
We are conscious that like afterschool programming, carpooling is essential for many families in order to manage their day-to-day commute to and from school and the broader demands of family logistics. If families are carpooling with siblings only, then the sibling quarantine guidelines would apply.
When families are carpooling with non-siblings in different classrooms we strongly encourage health and safety protocols that include masking at all times, hand sanitizing, and keeping car windows open.
A student in the carpool would not need to quarantine if another carpool student were part of a positive classroom pooled test. However, if the student from the positive classroom pooled test subsequently received an individual test and were positive for Covid, then the other carpool student(s) would be required to quarantine immediately. They would be considered close contacts and directly exposed to COVID-19.
