The Fayette school district will ease qualifications for transitioning to more strict levels of its COVID-19 protocols. The decision was approved by the district’s Board of Education during its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, October 20.

The district uses green, yellow, and red levels to signify its current status with regard to the spread of the virus among students and staff. Currently, the district is at the green level, where it has been all year. Under green level, schooling and everyday activities are relatively normal, although students are still spaced three feet apart in adherence to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

Under the old plan, if 25 or more students and staff combined were quarantined away from school, the district would move to yellow level for two weeks, which would include masking. Superintendent Jill Wiseman asked the board to approve a plan in which the district would transition to yellow level when the number of staff and students on quarantine reached 65, which is about 10% of the district’s population.

The board also voted to change the wording so that those quarantine numbers that count toward level transitions are only students who have been placed on quarantine due to close contact at school. A student who is placed on quarantine due to, for instance, exposure to the virus from a family member away from school, would not be counted among the 65 used to elicit a move to yellow or red level.

“We have always tracked the number in quarantine, but really for that it should be school contract traced students,” Wiseman explained. “We would like to add that wording in there that just clarifies these are only students that are close contact traced at school.”

Out of the 45 students placed on quarantine so far this year, only two were school-related close contacts.

Previously, the plan stated that the “number of individuals in quarantine is equal to or exceeds 25.” The wording now in place states that “number of individuals in quarantine due to close contact exposure at school is equal to or exceeds 65.”

A transition to red level, in which the school would close down and switch to online instruction, is already set to occur when quarantine levels reach 20% of the population. The new rule puts the transition to yellow level at half of what would force a move to red.

The district transitioned to red level following the Thanksgiving break in 2020 when after high numbers of Daly Elementary School staff, and several students and staff in the middle and high schools, were quarantined. When school returned to in-person learning on December 1, 2020, a mask mandate was put in place for students and staff. Previously only staff was required to wear masks.

The mask mandate was lifted for students effective March 29, 2021, and no mask mandate is currently in place for either students or staff.

So far this year there have been a handful of positive cases. The district maintains a daily count of both positive cases and those on quarantine on its website. On Thursday, October 21, there were six positive cases; two each in the elementary and middle schools, and one in the high school. That number also includes staff not assigned to a particular building.

In addition to the six positive cases, 15 students are on quarantine due to close contact. Of those 15, only seven are school contacts. 

Superintendent Wiseman said that nearly all of the positive cases so far have been in the student population. According to the district, around two-thirds of the staff are vaccinated.

“At this point in the year we’ve had a total of 45 kids quarantined for school-related close contact,” Wiseman explained.

Since the start of the fall semester, there have been 21 positive cases, mostly in the elementary and high schools. There have been no more than six positive cases at one time. 

In comparison, the district saw 25 total cases during the entire 2020-21 school year. 

“We’re already at 21. This delta variant is no joke,” said Kelly Beeler, the district’s nurse, during the meeting on October 21. “Obviously we’re seeing more in our student population, the younger kids that we didn’t see last year.”

Beeler said there were four cases on Tuesday of last week.

In Howard County as of Monday, October 25, there have been a total of 975 cases to date, and 12 deaths attributed to the virus. There have been 13 cases confirmed in the seven previous days. These numbers are according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.