District office responds to student questions regarding COVID-19

By Declan Fee and Ayisi Ni,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

The HUB is gathering questions from students, staff and community members about COVID procedures and reporting processes. Davis Joint Unified School District Public Information Officer Kristin Connor worked with District staff to answer your questions.

Do you have another question or concern? Email bluedevilhub.com@gmail.com or message us through our Instagram account @bluedevilhub.

Q. Is there a reason for the apparent lack of reporting (on the COVID-19 dashboard)?

A. We have dedicated several additional staff, working long days and nights throughout the weekend to conduct contact tracing, which is the process by which we determine if additional students and staff need to quarantine due to exposure to a positive case. Due to the surge, we have focused our efforts on contact tracing to make sure exposed students/staff quarantine, if needed, and the dashboard daily updating through the weekend was deprioritized. We apologize for any angst this may have caused. We are triaging multiple important activities the best we can with the staff we have.

We discovered, as a result of your questions, that there were errors in the staff column of the Dashboard. This was caused by the sheer volume of new cases coming in and our decision to prioritize getting exposed students off campus as quickly as possible. Those have been corrected, and we now have updated systems in place to ensure those are updated daily.

Q. Teachers have shared with us that students are no longer designated as in quarantine on their attendance sheet. Is this true, and do you know why?

A. With the surge in cases since winter break and many more absences being reported each day, the attendance office is marking students as absent, but not designating whether the absence was due to a positive COVID case, parents keeping students home due to “an abundance of caution,” or some with another illness or other reasons. Once cases slow down again, the attendance office will be able to return to designating students as “in quarantine.”

Q. With the current rise of cases, is there a possibility of the return to online learning, and if yes, how strong is that possibility at the moment?

A. The likelihood of returning to Distance Learning is low. This would require either the Governor, Public Health or the Legislature to send all Districts back to Distance Learning, and we have received no indications of this happening or even being discussed.

Q.  If online school is not a possibility at the moment, when will it start to be? 

A. With regard to a pause on in-person learning and a move back to Distance Learning, the Distance Learning Options available last school year were only possible as a result of state level action. Currently, Districts do not have the ability to transition back to Distance Learning .

Q. Teachers have explained to students that their children currently have COVID, but they are still in class. What is the reasoning behind having exposed teachers come into class?

A. Throughout the pandemic, we have relied on guidance from Yolo County Public Health Officer, Dr. Aimee Sisson, the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control. This guidance, as you know, continues to evolve as conditions change, and we rely on guidance from our public health experts to shape our health-related policies. Staff meet with Dr. Sisson at least once per week and usually more often given the nature of the pandemic. As of now, there have not been any changes to the quarantine protocols for vaccinated individuals who come into contact with a person positive with COVID-19. The current protocols state that if a person is fully vaccinated, they can continue to come to work/school even when exposed to a positive case as long as they are tested regularly and are symptom-free.

Q. How is the district currently handling student exposures within classrooms?

A. Detailed information about how we handle positive cases can be found on our website at:

https://www.djusd.net/covid-19/healthy_campuses/plan_for_when_students_or_staff_becomes_ill