*Updated COVID-19 Guidance* - website/Schoology/social
The West Virginia Department of Education, under the authority of the WV Bureau for Public Health, updated its school recovery guidance on Jan. 31st, 2022.
Please find the full, updated guidance at: https://wvde.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/School-Recovery-and-Guidance-Document-013122-v4.pdf. Please note that this guidance may change at any time.
Kanawha County Schools has a universal indoor mask policy and will follow the guidance provided for universal indoor mask policy districts.
Please note the following important updates:
With universal masking, effective now, only individuals with reported positive cases of COVID-19, those within a household of a positive case, and those experiencing symptoms need to quarantine. Exposures at school are no longer required to quarantine unless they experience symptoms.
Test-to-play information for positive athletes and extra-curricular participants is being delivered to schools this week. Athletes and students who participate in group extra-curricular activities are encouraged to take advantage of offers from our testing partners.
Schools will no longer conduct contact tracing and parents will no longer receive exposure calls. Schools will continue to post information daily about positive cases in the school in Schoology. Families should monitor students for symptoms daily.
What has stayed the same:
KCS is still observing a universal masking policy in all of our buildings. This may be addressed in the future as cases go down.
The quarantine period has not changed and those guidelines are available through the link above. School nurses or administrators will continue to let you know when reporting a positive case when the positive individual may return to school.
KCS administrators continue to connect with the Head Nurse on individual situations and situations where we may need to close a classroom or a school. This includes consultation regarding classrooms and individuals who are unable to mask or are inconsistently masked.
KCS continues to work daily with the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department in looking at individual cases or groups of cases in our schools and is prepared to close classrooms or schools as needed. Guidance on what leads to a classroom or school closure is provided through the link.
How do I find out what’s happening in my child’s school?
Daily: Guardians can find daily school-specific COVID-19 positive case updates in Schoology. Anyone can view the countywide tracker on our COVID-19 tab. It is updated daily. https://kcs.kana.k12.wv.us/covid-19/school_covid_case_procedure___tracking.
Weekly: All KCS schools are now directly reporting positive cases to a new WV DHHR tracking survey every Monday which then appears here, typically on Tuesday afternoon - https://wvde.us/covid19/school-covid-dashboard/. This is where you will find the most robust information regarding school cases from the week before.