Henrico Schools relaxes COVID-19 quarantine rules

Hours before President Joe Biden announced he was urging states to require school employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, Henrico Schools officials announced the division will ease up on some quarantine guidelines in an effort to keep students and staff engaged with in-person learning as much as possible.

The length of quarantines for unvaccinated people who have experienced a “close contact” with a COVID-19 infected person has been shortened from 14 days to 10 days, HCPS Chief of Staff Beth Teigen told school board members Thursday afternoon.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends a quarantine period of 14 days. However, the agency’s guidance also notes that “based on local circumstances and resources” quarantine can be shortened to 10 days if no symptoms have been reported during daily monitoring.

“We want impacted students and staff to be able to return to the classroom or work as soon as possible,” Teigen said.

Another change to HCPS quarantine rules allows unvaccinated people who had close contact with an infected person to return to school eight days after exposure if the person tests negative (PCR or rapid test) five days or more after the exposure. This change is based on new guidance from the Virginia Department of Health.

“The goal for all of us is to keep our students in the building safely,” said Henrico School Board Vice Chair Marcie Shea (Tuckahoe District).

Change to 'close-contact' rule

Officials also announced exception to the “close contact” rule Thursday, following guidance from the VDH for K-12 settings: If an unvaccinated student is three feet or farther away from a COVID-19 infected student, and both students are wearing masks, that no longer will be considered a close contact.

HCPS will begin following the new exception next week. It applies only in student-to-student situations and not to teachers, staff, preschoolers, or preschool providers. The exception also doesn’t count if the contact happened on a school bus.

Otherwise, a “close contact” is defined as an instance in which a person is within six feet of someone infected with COVID-19 for a total of 15 minutes or more during a 24-hour period.
Guidance for fully vaccinated people remains unchanged. They generally do not have to quarantine if they were exposed to COVID-19, but it is recommended that they get tested three to five days after exposure and wear masks in public for two weeks or until they receive a negative test result.

The school system has four part-time positions allocated to contact-tracing. Two have been filled and are in the process of beginning, but the other two have not yet been hired, according to Teigen. Two HCPS employees have been temporarily reassigned to do contact tracing in the meantime.

Vaccine mandates?

On Thursday, Biden announced a six-part national strategy to fight COVID-19, one component of which encourages governors to require that school employees be vaccinated.

Coincidentally, Teigen discussed vaccine requirements at Thursday's meeting, hours before Biden's announcement, saying that the school system had no plans to mandate vaccination for its employees.

“There are reasons why some individuals receive a vaccine, there's personal reasons why they might not want to, and we really focus on the mitigation efforts," Teigen said. “We're living in a time where. . .  it's really difficult right now to find sufficient, qualified staff that help with keeping our schools open and operating. To add another barrier. . .  that is very personal to some people, it is not something we decided to do at this point.”

The board meeting ended before Biden's plan came out, and therefore HCPS officials weren't aware of the plan during the meeting. Gov. Northam's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the new presidential directive.

Richmond Public Schools has mandated vaccines for all employees, and Fairfax County Public Schools has implemented a similar measure.

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Anna Bryson is the Henrico Citizen's education reporter and a Report for America corps member. Make a tax-deductible donation to support her work, and RFA will match it dollar for dollar.