Quarantine requirements may delay return to in-person school
Limitations to interstate travel may affect vacations, start of fall semester
Shannon Silver had planned to take her family on a trip from her home in Connecticut to visit relatives in Ohio just before the start of the school year for her two children.
But she and her husband reversed course when people traveling from Ohio were added to a list of those who must quarantine for 14 days upon entering Connecticut. That requirement might have meant her 10-year-old son would miss the first day of sixth grade at St. Matthew School in Bristol.
“We weren’t going to do that, especially at the beginning of the school year,” Silver said. “Plus, he really didn’t want to miss the last two weeks of summer by having to quarantine.”
The family instead went to see other relatives in Colorado, which wasn’t on the list.
As states around the country require visitors from areas with high rates of coronavirus infections to quarantine upon arrival, children taking end-of-summer vacations to hot spots are facing the possibility of being forced to skip the start of in-person learning at their schools.
More than a dozen states have such travel advisories, including many in the Northeast along with Alaska, Kentucky and Ohio.
More than 30 states are on the list issued by Connecticut, New York and New Jersey in an attempt to prevent another surge of COVID-19 in the region, which was among the hardest hit early in the pandemic. As schools in the Northeast prepare to open early next month, officials are urging parents to be mindful of that guidance while planning any Labor Day getaways.
In Connecticut, where infection numbers are among the lowest in the country, more than half of schools are planning to open for inperson learning. Gov. Ned Lamont made it clear this month that neither students nor teachers would be exempt from quarantine if they visit a hot spot.
“Don’t go to South Florida; don’t go to Phoenix, Arizona, and skip El Paso, Texas, and I would stay away from Southern California for a while too,” said Lamont, a Democrat. “I would stay close to home. I think there are some amazing places you can visit here and do it a lot safer.”
Bill Smith, a high school teacher at Southern Regional High School in Ocean County, New Jersey, said he canceled a research trip that was planned as part of his graduate degree from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
“This is the first summer in years that I have not traveled outside of the state,” Smith said. “I have been more than happy to follow any and all guidelines that help protect the health and safety of those around me.”
Pat Toben-Cropper, of Herndon, Virginia, is planning to drive her daughter, Kylie Cropper, back to college this month at the Institute of Art and Design at New England College in Manchester, New Hampshire. She said because of the travel advisories in the Northeast, she was unable to get a hotel reservation north of Pennsylvania.
“It became this logistical nightmare,” she said.
But enforcing the rules can be challenging. In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said recently he can’t bar people from traveling and hoped they would heed the quarantine advice.