November 12, 2020

November 12, 2020

Dear Parents and Staff,

The North Linn School District received some new information today from Linn County Health.  See the note below regarding new guidance for COVID-19 contact tracing.

The email information below is from Tricia Kitzman - Linn County Health:

Please share with your Linn County school superintendents. We realize this will impact our schools and the number of staff and students that will be identified as needing to be quarantined. Due to the magnitude of new COVID-19 cases Linn County is experiencing and the strain that is being placed on our local hospitals, we are trying to be as proactive as possible to slow the spread in our community and help our local public health and healthcare infrastructure. We will do everything possible to work with the school districts to navigate this new guidance.

Effective 11-12-20 at 10:00, Linn County Public Health will be utilizing CDC close contact recommendations for COVID-19.

Close contact is defined as:

• Being within 6 feet of someone who has COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or

more in a 24 hour period, starting from 2 days before illness onset or testing.

• Living in the same household as a person diagnosed with COVID-19.

• Direct physical contact with the person (hugged or kissed them)

• Being sneezed, coughed, or somehow got respiratory droplets on you from a COVID-19 infected individual.

Close contact includes all of the above, regardless of mask use.

Close contacts will be expected to quarantine for 14 days after the last exposure. Quarantine is used to keep someone who might have been exposed to COVID-19 away from others. Quarantine helps prevent spread of disease that can occur before a person knows they are sick or if they are infected with the virus without feeling symptoms. People in quarantine should stay home, separate themselves from others, monitor their health, and follow directions from their local health department.

If a close contact develops symptoms of COVID-19, or tests positive for COVID-19, he/she should isolate. Isolation is used to separate someone who is infected with the virus away from others, even in their home. People who are in isolation should stay home until it’s safe for them to be around others. In the home, anyone sick or infected should separate themselves from others by staying in a specific “sick room” or area and using a separate bathroom (if available) until the following criteria is met:  

No fever for at least 24 hours (without the use medicine that reduces fevers)

AND

other symptoms have improved (for example, when cough or shortness of breath have improved)

AND

at least 10 days have passed since symptoms first appeared

For more information, please see the following link:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine.html

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#Contact-Tracing

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.  Thank you for all that you are doing to ensure the health and wellbeing of our community. Linn County Public Health appreciates our partnership with you, your team and our area school districts. 

Thanks and be well-

Tricia

These new guidelines may have a significant impact on the number of students and staff who may need to quarantine.  As a district, we will be following these guidelines and will do our best to help Linn County Health contact trace at school.  If a student at school must quarantine due to close contact with someone who tests positive, the school or Linn County Health will be making direct contact with the parents.  It is important that parents have a plan in case they have a child who needs to quarantine for several weeks.  

On a slightly different topic, I have been asked if we are considering applying for a waiver from the state to move to virtual learning. There are a number of schools in Iowa and around North Linn that are applying for waivers to move to virtual learning for several weeks.  The Iowa Department of Education has set guidelines of student absenteeism of 10% and a county positivity rate of 15% to apply for a waiver.  These are guidelines to assist districts but districts can apply if other circumstances exist as well.  Many schools have been faced with a significant staff shortage which is causing the need to move to virtual learning.

This week, our student absenteeism rate was 1.2% or less each day.  We have less than 6 students who are testing positive and less than 6 staff members testing positive.  We have 40 students and 7 staff members quarantined. The latest positive rate data available for Linn County was 12.5% on November 1. If we start to have a high level of students or staff test positive or our student or staff absenteeism rate substantially increases, then we may also have to consider requesting a waiver from the state.  Thankfully, we have been doing better than many schools so we plan to continue with our current plan of teaching our students at school.  

We will continue to update our COVID dashboard on the district website.  Our goal is to continue to educate students at school because we have been successful so far this year.  It is difficult to determine the impact the new guidance from Linn County Health will have on our school but we will continue to carefully monitor the situation and keep you informed.

Also this week, the Governor signed a proclamation limiting the number of spectators that can attend events at school due to the number of increasing cases of COVID-19.  We are expecting more guidance on this topic tomorrow and then we will send out information regarding these events as soon as possible.  

Thanks for your continued patience and support as we work through this new information we received this week.  Please know that we will continue to communicate with you as soon as we have important new information to share.

Thanks,

Dave Hoeger