Quarantine: New obstacle for schools
Surge hampering students, teams trying to get to normal
When Tim Burns received a call from the nurse at his daughter Emma’s school on a recent afternoon, the message was both alarming and confusing.
He was told Emma, a third grader at Admiral Byrd Elementary School in Elk Grove Village, was required to quarantine for two weeks after contact tracers found she’d been only 5 feet, 10 inches away from a classmate who’d tested positive for COVID-19 — just 2 inches short of the 6 feet that would have allowed her to remain at school.
“I couldn’t figure out what was happening. … Did she get out of her seat? And were any other parents in her classroom getting a call?” said Burns, a former member of the Community Consolidated School District 59 Board of Education.
Although the vast majority of Illinois students are now learning in person at least part time after more than a year of pandemic-prompted remote instruction, the surging number of kids forced into quarantine has been the latest source of disruption and frustration in the prolonged and difficult effort to reopen schools.
With the shifting metric for social distancing in schools — where 3 feet is now the allowable standard but exposure within 6 feet of an infected student can still result in a quarantine — the ability to
remain in class is sometimes a game of inches.
When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened its classroom social distancing guidelines earlier this year, slashing the recommended 6 feet in half, the Illinois Department of Health “alerted schools that more students may need to be quarantined when moving to 3 feet,” IDPH spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said.
But the main factor driving the rising number of students in quarantine, Arnold said, can be found outside the classroom, specifically, “more kids coming to school while infectious after being exposed to someone who is positive.”
“In some cases, students and staff are placing themselves at greater risk of exposure while at social gatherings and club sports, and not adhering to public health measures — masking, social distancing, avoiding large gatherings,” Arnold said.
“The keys to decreasing the need for quarantine are to make sure students, teachers and staff are not coming to school sick … they get tested if they were exposed, and following public health guidance away from school,” Arnold said.
Fenwick High School, a Catholic school in Oak Park, is still operating on a hybrid schedule, fearing that bringing back all students under the current rules could result in a “massive” quarantine, Principal Peter Groom said.
Given space constraints, it’s impossible to seat the full population of students 6 feet apart, Groom said.
And while a school task force explored the idea of a full-time return for all — and asked the Oak Park Public Health Department if an exception could be made to the close contact rules that require quarantine for students who are within 6 feet of someone who tests positive — the request was denied, Groom said.
“Our nurses were informed there would be no variance granted, which we understand,” he said.
In Clarendon Hills-based School District 181, the space issue is most acute in the middle schools, where numerous classrooms cannot allow for 6-feet spacing and where students spend their time in multiple rooms.
As a result, four positive coronavirus tests have caused another 55 students to quarantine, spokeswoman Jamie Lavigueur said.
It’s not clear yet whether any of the quarantining students have also tested positive, Lavigueur said.
“I don’t think we have enough data to prove that one way or the other,” she said.
Indian Prairie School District 204, which covers parts of Aurora and Naperville, has been hit with a rash of quarantines connected to its sports programs. Neuqua Valley High School, for instance, saw its freshman and sophomore football teams go into quarantine after someone connected to the program tested positive.
That cost the teams their last game of the season. Multisport athletes like Ryan Mohler, a 15-year-old freshman who plays football and wrestles, are losing part of their next season as well while they’re stuck at home logging into their classes.
“We were in person (briefly) but now I’m back online,” he said. “… It just doesn’t make too much sense to pull the whole team when not all of us might have been in contact (with the person who tested positive).”
Rich Catizone, whose daughter Olivia, 15, plays on the school’s freshman volleyball team, is equally exasperated by the rules. He said a player from another school tested positive after a game, but only front-line Neuqua Valley players like his daughter were sent into quarantine — the rest of the squad was able to remain in school.
Even though she has tested negative, Catizone said, “(the district) is just not allowing any leeway for her getting into school. This all seems like it’s been made up on the fly.”
Deputy Superintendent Doug Eccarius declined to speak about specific cases but said the district is following guidance from IDPH and the DuPage County Health Department. IDPH has said sports like football, deemed high-risk, require the entire team to be quarantined if one person tests positive, he said.
Lower-risk sports, meanwhile, are subject to contact tracing that can clear some athletes while sending others to quarantine, depending how close they were to the person who tested positive.
“There are a lot of difficult phone calls between nurses and the families,” he said. “It’s challenging, and not a position that people a year ago thought we would have been in.”
In neighboring Naperville School District 203, more than 700 students were in quarantine the week of April 12, almost double the week before. Chicago’s Kenwood Academy High School was reporting 50 people in quarantine the week of April 18. At Lockport Township High School District 205, more than 270 students, or almost 7%, were quarantined as of Thursday. Similarly, at Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, 155 students were recently in quarantine.
Even at school districts that have not been hit by the recent rash of quarantines, educators remain perplexed by the revised COVID-19 guidelines, and the ever-changing slate of conflicting recommendations on how to keep students and teachers safe.
“People want to be rule-abiding, but keeping up with all of the changing recommendations can be really hard, and very frustrating and stress-inducing,” said Kaine Osburn, superintendent of Wilmette-based Avoca School District 37.
When Osburn heard that the Illinois High School Association had lifted mandated mask-wearing for certain sports, including cross country, he hoped to find confirmation of the less restrictive guideline on the state health department’s website prior to the district’s first home meet.
But he found that state guidance was still recommending that student athletes wear masks at competitions, Osburn said.
“I literally ended up hearing three different things in 24 hours,” Osburn said, adding that one way to help schools and families navigate the shifting COVID-19 rules would be to embed an educator at the state’s health department who could help officials understand how school systems work.
“I have a sympathy for everything our health departments are having to deal with right now, but I’m not an epidemiologist, and they’re not school superintendents, so we need some kind of collaboration,” Osburn said.
Students required to quarantine have been identified through contact tracing, which involves interviewing the infected person to identify who they’ve been in close contact with during the 48 hours before they became sick, or before they were tested if asymptomatic, until the time they went into isolation, said Arnold of the state’s health department.
When cases occur in a school setting, the schools will assist the local health department in identifying all close contacts, she said. Students, teachers, other staff members or anyone who has been in close contact with the infected person — meaning within 6 feet for 15 minutes in a 24-hour period — need to quarantine.
Back in Elk Grove Village, Burns’ daughter Emma has finished up her quarantine, and is happy to now be back in the classroom with her friends.
While Burns said he and his wife fully understand the need for student quarantines, it proved traumatic for their daughter to learn she was potentially exposed to the virus and had to stay home from school and other activities for two weeks.
“She had trouble sleeping, because even though she felt good, and had no symptoms, she was afraid to go to bed, because she was worried she’d feel sick when she woke up in the morning,” Burns said.
He and his wife were also dismayed that school administrators failed to provide social-emotional support for his daughter, and gave the family little time to find last-minute day care.
“We got a call at 4:30 p.m. telling us Emma couldn’t come to school the next morning,” Burns said, adding: “We were able to cover the days between my wife and I and grandparents, but I have to wonder, what do other families do who are not so fortunate?”
“We were in person (briefly) but now I’m back online. … It just doesn’t make too much sense to pull the whole team when not all of us might have been in contact (with the person who tested positive).” — Ryan Mohler, a 15-year-old freshman at Neuqua Valley High School who plays football and wrestles