BOSTON – It has been four long years since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, closing schools and disrupting child care. But now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced that parents can start treating the virus like any other respiratory illness.
This means that the days of mandated isolation periods and masking are over. However, the question remains: will schools and child care centers agree to these new guidelines?
Just to recap, before Friday, all Americans, including school children, were required to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19, and then wear masks for a set period of time, according to the CDC.
But with the number of COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations decreasing, the CDC now says that children can return to school when their overall symptoms improve and they have been fever-free for 24 hours without taking medication. The CDC also encourages students to continue wearing masks upon their return.
However, the change in guidelines may not have an immediate impact on how individual schools and child care providers handle sick children. Different schools and districts have had varying levels of success in following CDC recommendations, often looking to local authorities for the final say. In some cases, other factors such as reducing absences may influence a state or district’s decision-making process.
This can lead to a confusing array of policies among states and districts, leaving parents feeling overwhelmed and unsure of how to navigate the ever-changing landscape of COVID guidelines.
Gloria Cunningham, a single mother in the Boston area, shares her frustration, “This is so confusing. I just don’t know what to think about COVID anymore. Is it still a monster?”
Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, explains that her company requires her to take 10 days off work if she gets COVID-19. And her son’s school system has still been sending home COVID test kits for students to use before returning to school after long breaks.
“I feel like we should either do away with all the precautions or keep them all in place,” she says.
The public education system has had varying policies on COVID since the start of the pandemic. During the 2021-2022 school year, 18 states followed the CDC’s recommendation for mask-wearing in class. When the CDC lifted its masking guidelines in February 2022, states such as Massachusetts followed suit, while others like California kept the mask requirement for schools in place.
In the world of child care, some providers have been using more stringent testing and isolation protocols than what the CDC has recommended. Their reasons range from preventing outbreaks to keeping staff healthy – both for their own safety and to ensure that the child care center can remain open.
Some states have already moved to more lenient guidelines ahead of the CDC’s recent announcement. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts have followed their lead.
In an effort to minimize school absences and address the epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged children to come to school when mildly sick and has stated that students who test positive for COVID but are asymptomatic can still attend school. This policy has been adopted by school systems in Los Angeles, San Diego, and other cities.
However, the majority of big-city districts around the country still require parents to isolate their children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, like Boston and Atlanta, also require students to wear masks for an additional five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.
But some school leaders suggest that even the previous five-day isolation requirement was not strictly followed.
Eric Conti, superintendent of Burlington, Massachusetts, explains that although the official policy in his district is for students to stay home for five days if they test positive, the reality is that “it’s a virus, and we have to deal with it.”
This is because COVID is managed at home, relying on the honor system.
“Without school-based testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” Conti says via text message.
In Ridley School District, located in the Philadelphia suburbs, Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel says that their policy has been similar to the new CDC guidelines for quite some time. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. And when they do return, they must wear masks for five days. Wentzel adds that the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement due to the
