New Covid Procedures
As seen on the news recently, the State of Kansas made a major shift in how they are handling Covid cases, so I want to clarify how this affects students here in Argonia. It was announced in a joint release by the Kansas Dept of Health (KDHE) and the Kansas Dept of Education (KSDE) that they are no longer doing contact tracing nor expecting schools to do it; rather, we are to focus only on those showing symptoms. From a practical standpoint, here's what that will look like:
- Anyone coming to school with 2 or more unexplained symptoms (which is the same standard we’ve been using the past two years now) will need to be tested or go home. To be clear, this has nothing to do with vaccination status, whether someone has already had Covid, or anything else…it’s anyone at school who has symptoms.
- Anyone who tests positive (whether at school or somewhere else) will need to stay home for a minimum of 5 days; the quarantine period is still 10 days, but they can come back to school masked the last 5 days as long as they are unmedicated fever-free for 24 hrs and their symptoms are improving.
- The school will no longer do anything with close contacts of those testing positive. We will not even track who may have been a close contact; thus, we will no longer notify parents if their child was a close contact and close contacts will not need to be tested.
- We can still test students who do not have symptoms, but only upon request; for example, if a parent knows their child was exposed over the weekend and wants them tested, we can still do that.
If anyone has questions about these new procedures, please feel free to email me at rclark@argonia359.org or call my office at 620-435-6311, ext. 3.
Rustin Clark, Superintendent
