Community Update
January 14, 2022
Happy New Year, Lancaster parents! We hope that your holiday break was safe, eventful, and afforded you time to enjoy friends and family. We are now officially into the second half of the school year and June will be here before you know it!
New Masking Requirements
We are all aware of the rapidly escalating count of COVID cases these past few weeks as the Omicron variant grips the nation, California, and our local community. Daily, the District has been receiving new information from Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LA-DPH) along with guidance from the California Department of Public Health. The sheer volume of information is dizzying and we continue to process and modify our procedures to create safe learning environments for our students and our staff and to keep our schools and programs open. Recently, LA-DPH modified their masking guidance for staff and students and we’d like to take a few minutes to provide clarity on how you can prepare your child for school under these new mandates.
All students and staff are required to wear a mask while indoors. Students must wear at least a cloth face covering, although greater protection is encouraged and can be achieved from a surgical, N95, or KN95 mask. The school will issue a cloth or paper mask to any student who does not report to school with a mask. These requirements have been in place since the start of the 2021-22 school year.
A new mandate was issued last week about masking outdoors. Students have been allowed to remove their mask outdoors while at recess, play, in PE, or while eating or drinking. The new mandate says that students are “…required to wear masks while outdoors when in crowded settings, and in other spaces where distancing is not possible or practical.”
This means that a school employee may ask your student to again put on a mask, if students begin to cluster together closer than 6 feet. Your student has the choice of reapplying the mask or moving apart from others in order to create a gap of at least 6 feet from others.
The requirement to re-mask under these conditions was previously a recommendation. With the onset of the Omicron variant and recent surge in cases, LA-DPH has now mandated that all schools in the county follow these outdoors masking requirements.
Please have a conversation with your student about these new safety protocols. If you have questions, reach out to your school’s administrator for additional details.
Rapid Test Kits
You may have heard on the news that rapid COVID antigen test kits were going to be distributed to all school districts in California with the intent to allow parents to test their children at home for COVID prior to them returning from winter break. Unfortunately, the tests were not delivered to the District in time to enact this plan as we received the tests only this week, after students had already returned.
The District has now reconsidered the use of the tests and has developed a strategy using them to give rapid response should a student show symptoms at school. Here are how the tests will be used:
COVID Symptoms
- If a student is showing COVID symptoms at school, they will be escorted to the Wellness Room and the parent will be contacted for pickup.
- Once the parent arrives, the school will ask permission to administer the rapid test to the student and also gather some pertinent information for testing purposes.
- If the test results (achieved in about 15 minutes) show the student is positive for COVID, the student and parent will be instructed to proceed home along with instructions on isolation. Further, the parent will be given a second rapid test that will be administered to the student 5 days later.
- If the results of the second test are negative and the student has been symptom free and fever free for 24 hours, the student is then cleared to return to school the next day.
COVID Exposure
- If it is determined that your student was exposed to a person who tested positive for COVID and your student is fully vaccinated, the school will administer a rapid COVID test after receiving the parent’s permission. If the results of the rapid test are negative, the student will not be required to quarantine.
- Parents and students should continue to monitor student health for any new COVID like symptoms in the days following the rapid test.
- If your student was exposed, but is unvaccinated, they must quarantine. A rapid test will be sent home with the student to be administered on Day 5 of quarantine.
- Your student may return on Day 6, if the test is negative.
You will soon be receiving a survey via email or telephone communique that will allow you to grant permission for the District to conduct rapid antigen and PCR testing with your student for the aforementioned situations. We appreciate your participation in the survey.
Thank you for your time. We wish you and your student much success in the remainder of the school year.
44711 N. Cedar Avenue
Lancaster, CA 93534
661-948-4661