Asheville City Schools Back-to-School Safety Update

Asheville City Schools will continue to follow the recommendations of our local public health department.

The North Carolina legislature has passed Senate Bill 654, which requires the Asheville City Board of Education to vote each month on whether to continue to require face coverings for all students and staff.

Therefore, “face coverings” will be an item on the agenda of the September 13th Work Session, and the Board will be voting on it during the September 20th regular meeting. “Face coverings” will be a standing item on meeting agendas for the foreseeable future.

Ashley-Michelle Thublin, Executive Director of Communications, has also provided further clarification regarding confirmed positives, how confirmed positives are communicated, and quarantine and isolation procedures.

Confirmed Positives

What makes a case a “confirmed positive”?

If a student or staff member tests positive for Covid-19 with an at-home test kit that was not prescribed or ordered by a healthcare provider or from an at-home specimen collection kit that was sent to a lab for testing (like Pixel by LabCorp), Asheville City Schools requires a second test to confirm the diagnosis. The second test can be carried out by your local healthcare provider or at no charge at any Asheville City Schools facility.

At-home tests that are not prescribed by a healthcare provider or sent to a lab are not acceptable testing results, per North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services guidelines.

If a student or staff member tests positive for Covid-19 with an Asheville City Schools rapid antigen test, you do not need to receive a second positive test. ACS is able to provide rapid antigen tests at school as part of a statewide program. All tests that result in a positive diagnosis are reported to the state and to BCDHHS.

Students and/or parents can provide Asheville City Schools with a positive test result from a local healthcare provider or certified testing site to allow for confirmation of a positive case.

If your child has been tested for Covid-19 and is waiting on their results, they should not come to school.

And, if a student or staff member has tested positive for Covid-19, they are required to isolate. Per the Strong Schools NC Public Health Toolkit, Asheville City Schools will continue to follow the recommendations of our local public health department regarding quarantine for close contacts and isolation for positive cases.

Communication About Confirmed Positives

ACS is striving to provide the public with accurate information as quickly as possible.

Contact tracing occurs only for confirmed positive cases. Therefore, school administrators are only able to notify families that a student in their child’s class has tested positive for Covid-19 after 1) a case has been confirmed and 2) close contacts have been identified.

Though information is shared among friends before the individual case can be confirmed, the district must wait until a case has been confirmed to ensure the information we’re sharing is accurate.

To keep staff and students as safe as possible, families should continue to monitor their child for Covid-19 symptoms:

Fever or chills
Cough
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
Fatigue
Muscle or body aches
Headache
New loss of taste or smell
Sore throat
Congestion or runny nose
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea

Quarantine Procedures

Also, ACS has provided an update to quarantine protocols.

In August, various scenarios were offered to support families if their child was in close contact with a confirmed case of Covid-19. However, now that students are back in classrooms, schools cannot guarantee physical distancing as required for a shortened quarantine, although staff and students are maintaining as much physical distance as possible.

In collaboration with the MAHEC School Nurse Team, the new protocols include:

Any child who is not fully vaccinated and is identified as a close contact to someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 will be required to stay home from school and quarantine for 14 days. If your child is confirmed as a close contact, specific communication will be shared directly with your family, including the day your child can return to school.
A child who is a close contact but IS fully vaccinated can return to school the next day if they have no symptoms and are able to provide proof of vaccination.

Out of an abundance of precaution, Asheville City Schools will handle all its quarantine/isolation protocols like this until further notice.

Asheville City Schools will continue to keep staff and students as safe and healthy as possible. The pandemic has shown us that change is the only constant we’re facing, which is why we’re continuing to modify our safety protocols to ensure we can maintain a healthy, in-person learning environment.

For more information, please visit covid19.ncdhhs.gov/StrongSchoolsNC.

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