Back-to-school 2021 marks the third academic year the education of California’s 6 million children has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The opening of schools this month — including the Los Angeles Unified School District on Monday — is unfolding under the shadow of the surging Delta variant, supplanting much of the joy and relief families anticipated with new worries about masks, positive coronavirus tests, illness, vaccines, quarantines and outbreaks.
We are here to answer your questions.
What are the key protocols that must be in place as schools reopen in California?
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published its updated recommendations for K-12 schools July 19. The guidance is meant to provide a path to safe in-person instruction while minimizing missed school days. It suggests universal masking in schools, targeted quarantine practices, and access to a robust coronavirus testing program.
Above all, the CDC, the state of California and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health stress vaccination for all eligible individuals and masking in classrooms and school buildings as the most effective methods to prevent in-school transmission of the coronavirus.
Here are the basics you should expect to see at school:
California has mandated masks for all K-12 students when indoors with a few exceptions, which are intended to be rare and not simply based on parent and student preference or discomfort. The Los Angeles Unified School District also requires masking outdoors.
California teachers and school staff must be vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing — and some districts, including L.A. Unified and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, have enacted stricter vaccine mandates.
Although neither the state nor the CDC require physical distancing, schools are urged to keep students distanced as much as possible. When masks are not being used, such as when students are eating or drinking, physical distancing becomes more important, even essential, in the view of some experts.
Recommendations also call on schools to optimize ventilation in indoor spaces. Ideally, this means your school has installed high-grade MERV-13 filters on HVAC systems, although not all HVAC units can work effectively with these filters. Portable air purifiers also are being used in some cases. Even just opening one or more windows helps with ventilation.
Facilities are supposed to be cleaned frequently.
Increased hand-washing is expected.
There will be limited or no sharing of school supplies.
These “layers” of safety, as officials call the measures, go a long way toward making schools safe, experts say.
Where’s the best place to look for specific information about individual schools?
School districts around California have the authority to set their own policies for their own schools, provided state and local health department requirements are met. This means your school district could have rules that are stricter than the state’s. All school districts are required by the state to post detailed safety plans on their websites, which is where you can find information specific to your school district and campus. Every school district in California was required to submit its plan to the state.
What is the state mask mandate? How is it enforced?
The state requires masking indoors; however, mask enforcement on campus is left to schools. The California Department of Public Health’s mask rules for schools are as follows:
Masks are optional outdoors.
K-12 students are required to mask indoors (with exemptions for children younger than 2 or those who have a medical condition).
Exempted individuals are expected to wear a nonrestrictive alternative such as a face shield with a drape on the bottom edge.
Local educators are enacting a range of consequences for students who don’t follow the rules — such as issuing warnings or even barring them from campus. A few have suggested they may not enforce the order because they don’t believe it’s needed. Students, for the most part, appear not to be fazed by the rule and have said that they mainly are glad to be back at school with their friends. L.A. Unified has a stricter policy than the state and is requiring students and staff to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Children older than 2 are required to have a mask on at all times while on school property, except while eating or drinking.
Because masks have to be removed, eating and drinking should take place outside whenever possible, with social distancing. Should kids wear N95 masks?
That’s not necessary. Disposable surgical masks or cloth masks with at least two layers are fine, experts say.
“The best mask is one the child will keep on,” said Dr. Sara Bode, a pediatrician who directs school health services at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and helped write the American Academy of Pediatrics’ COVID-19 guidance for schools.
It might make sense for students to pack more than one mask because masks can get dirty or soiled. One untimely sneeze could do it. Keep in mind that masks come in many forms. Some children find the ear loops uncomfortable and prefer tie-on masks. Rubber frames can be inserted to make breathing more comfortable.
Also, schools are supposed to have extra masks available, even on school buses. If they don’t, parents should speak up.
Should parents sanitize book bags and other items when kids come home from school?
No. “At first, it looked like a virus that would spread on surfaces,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “But now we know that it is primarily transmitted through respiratory droplets.”
What about indoor activities like choir and band? Should parents discourage kids from participating?
No. But the most important way to keep things safe is for such activities to take place outside, with physical distancing. Schools figured out safe ways to offer these activities last year, and can do so again this year, the pediatrician Bode said. In these situations, it’s important that schools create layers of risk protection, she said.
Special masks for singers fit tightly around the face but bow out to leave more room for children to project their voices, she said. Likewise, there are masks with openings for band members’ mouths and also covers to catch droplets that might escape from the open ends of instruments.
Does California require COVID-19 vaccines for eligible students?
No, not currently for K-12 students. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Public health officials, however, continually stress the importance of vaccinating eligible children — especially now with the highly infectious Delta variant.
Are vaccines required for teachers and school staff?
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that proof of vaccination or regular testing would be required for all school employees — a policy that some school districts have already independently put in place. Some 1,000 public school districts as well as private schools will be affected by the order, which is set to take effect Thursday and gives schools until Oct. 15 to comply fully. In Los Angeles Unified, all teachers and staff have been ordered to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 15. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he believed vaccinations should be required for all teachers. And the top leaders of some teachers unions, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, indicated they would support vaccine mandates provided they were carried out with fairness and sensitivity. Weingarten said she expects to see more school districts adopting a vaccine mandate or a policy that requires employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly coronavirus testing. In L.A. County, more than two-thirds of school district employees have been vaccinated in most districts that have provided estimates, according to the L.A. County Office of Education.
What’s the risk for unvaccinated kids, and what’s the latest on pediatric infections?
Unvaccinated children are at risk of contracting a coronavirus infection, which, if symptoms develop, would be classified as COVID-19. And although severe illness can occur among infected children, it is rare. Other risks include multisystem inflammatory syndrome or MIS-C, an extremely rare, potentially fatal, condition that can occur after a coronavirus infection. So-called long COVID — after-effects of illness — can persist for weeks or months among small numbers of children, just as with adults. The possibility of infection has become a growing back-to-school concern. Because Delta is so highly transmissible, “you will see more children likely get infected,” Fauci said at a recent briefing. And “even though the percentage is small — a certain percentage of children will require hospitalization.” A recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that newly reported cases among children rose by 4% over a two-week period beginning July 22 and ending on Aug. 5.
Read more:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-12/back-to-school-covid-19-delta-variant-q-a
