COVID Attendance Report
As you may recall, we reported out the total number of positive COVID-19 cases and the total numbers of students/staff gone due to quarantine or isolation every Friday of the 20-21 school year. The IDPH will no longer be contact tracing nor will the Dallas County Health Department be regularly notifying the district of positive cases. Because we have less authority to have students quarantine due to exposure to someone who tested positive for COVID-19, that report doesn't seem to work as well this year.
So, for the 21-22 school year, our plan is to just do a comparison to the known number of students/staff gone due to COVID-19 positive tests, or known quarantines. We will report out the total number of students/staff gone for all non-COVID-19 related illnesses as well. We will also report the known total number of active COVID-19 positives. Students/staff must isolate for 10 days when testing positive for COVID-19. As of Friday, September 17, we have 3 known positive student/staff case of COVID-19. At the end of week four in 2020-21, we had 0 known COVID-19 cases. Though we have no true authority to require someone to quarantine as that responsibility is with the families, we do feel this will give people some information to make decisions that are best for their families in each of their respective situations.
If you aren't sure when to quarantine or isolate, please review the flowchart below for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
The data for the first few weeks of school will be skewed a bit because quarantine rules changed to when both individuals were wearing a mask, students did not need to quarantine whereas early in the year if students were exposed, they had to quarantine for 14 days whether they had masks on or not. Though the information is all dependent on what families decide to do in regard to quarantine for this year, it is a true comparison of known absences each day of the year for both the 20-21 school year and the 21-22 school year.
As a reminder, if a student/staff member tests positive for COVID-19, they should remain home for 10 days. If a student/staff member has a known exposure to someone with COVID-19 and they haven't been vaccinated, they should quarantine for 14 days, or a minimum of 10 days with no symptoms unless they have a negative test result and quarantine can be shortened to 7 days. More information on when to quarantine or isolate can be found here. If at any point an individual is sick, please stay home until symptoms have subsided.
Please let us know if the data is helpful or if other information would be more useful. Also, there is a PDF with an FAQ from the IDPH and IDOE below the COVID data and flowchart on when to isolate or quarantine.
