UPDATE 12/20/2021:
The Warren County Health Department strongly recommends individuals and orginizations continue following the Centers for Disease Control's COVID-19 guidelines, including for quarantine, isolation, contact tracing and testing. Health Director Stacey White told The Record that her department is no longer able to issue quarantine letters, but never recommended that the Warren County R-III School District end its own quarantine or test-to-stay protocols.
"It is up to (the school district) board how they proceed, and that is definitely not our recommendation," White said.
Original story:
After 16 months under specific COVID-19 protocols, the Warren County R-III School District has decided to remove the measures in place, essentially putting all choices concerning health and safety practices back into the hands of students and families.
School board members agreed during their monthly meeting on Dec. 9 to discontinue quarantine and contact-tracing practices, after a change in state policy that curtailed local health departments' authority for COVID response.
The school district's decision also means the end of its “test to stay” program that was implemented earlier in the fall.
“What we’ve done is, since the county health department stopped issuing quarantine orders, we’ve stopped doing quarantines as well,” said Superintendent Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith.
The move ultimately originated from a decision at the state level to end authorizations for strict COVID orders, prompting local authorities to consider the same for Warren County.
“This pretty much stemmed from the attorney general’s ruling and court case out of Cole County,” explained Klinginsmith. “Our health department reviewed that case and decided to stop issuing quarantine orders to individuals. That was the main reason we were quarantining, because there were orders to quarantine.”
He reports that through the test to stay program, the district identified that fewer than 5 percent of students were testing positive after coming in close contact with a verified COVID case.
“It wasn’t a high transmission rate,” said Klinginsmith, who is hopeful the changes will alleviate anxiety students may have been experiencing at the possibility of abruptly being quarantined and missing school.
“Hopefully from a mental health standpoint it givesmore stability to students that they come to school and not have to worry about being quarantined,” said Klinginsmith.
The policy change means it’s up to students to decide if they will wear a mask or stay home if they’ve been in contact with a COVID case. Neither of these measures will be mandatory, with the exception of masks on school buses, which are still required by a federal order.
Another reason the district supported lifting the mandates is that the COVID-19 vaccine is now available to students in all age levels, kindergarten through 12th grade.
“The reason we can drop this and feel like we can be safe is students have the opportunity to get vaccinated,” said Klinginsmith. “That option is available (now), and wasn’t all of last year and even most of this year.”
He believes the changes will also provide relief for staff, who had the added responsibility of tracking those in close proximity of positive cases.
“Contact tracing takes a tremendous amount of time and effort on the administration team to do that on a daily basis,” said Klinginsmith. “I’m so happy for them to get that time back to focus on working with students.”
The district will continue to inform students if they were in a classroom with an individual who tested positive, but will leave it up to individuals to choose whether to quarantine. R-III will continue to monitor positive cases and provide information through the COVID-19 dashboard on the district’s website.
School Board President Ginger Schenck said even before the state-level rulings, the R-III district has been consistently re-examining COVID mitigation strategies, with an eye toward lessening rules over time.
