Schools to discuss CDC guidelines Tuesday

Last week the Centers for Disease Control said students can be three feet apart in school if other precautions are in place, and the Anne Arundel Board of Education will discuss what that means for the system’s spring reopening Tuesday afternoon.

Right now about a third of students are back in school part-time, and the system has put a pause of requests to switch from virtual to hybrid as schools were overwhelmed with requests. With the old standard, 6 feet of distance required between students, schools could only accommodate 555 to 60% of their students, schools spokesman Bob Moiser said.

But now the CDC says elementary schoolers only need to be 3 feet apart no matter how much COVID-19 is spreading in the community. For older students who are more likely to spread the respiratory illness, they only need 3 feet of distance as long as spread in the community is not high. If spread is high and if dividing into cohorts isn’t possible, students should be 6 feet apart, the CDC said. Middle and high schoolers aren’t divided into cohorts that meet CDC standards, a spokesman said.

High is defined by the CDC as either a positivity rate for tests above 10%, or more than 100 new cases per 100,000 people in seven days. In the past seven days 148 new cases have been reported per 100,000 people, indicating high transmission. The county’s positivity rate was 6.46% Thursday, which indicates moderate transmission. CDC guidance says to defer to the higher indicator.

The guidelines don’t change school bus capacity, the system said in a statement.

The board will meet to discuss the new standard at 4 p.m. Tuesday. The meeting is closed to the public due to COVID-19, but people can testify virtually or submit a written comment at www.aacps.org/ boardtes timony.