When it comes to decisions about Covid-19 in schools during the upcoming school year, nurses will be at the front lines.
Newly released state guidance encourages nurses to play a “pivotal role” in schools’ Covid mitigation efforts, the Vermont Agency of Education and Department of Health said in a Wednesday press release.
The new, three-page guidance memo, signed by Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French and Health Commissioner Mark Levine, is aimed at establishing protocols for what officials described as “endemic” Covid-19 in schools when students return this fall.
“We will no doubt continue to see cases of COVID-19 in our communities and in our schools,” French said in the press release. “But with the advent of vaccination and new treatments, the risks from COVID-19 are much lower than they were two years ago. I am very optimistic that the opening of school this year will proceed with minimal interruption from COVID-19.”
Over the past school year, state officials released shifting recommendations, advising schools to implement a series of different Covid-19 testing, isolation and masking procedures.
By the end of the school year, however, most of that guidance had been rescinded.
The state released a few hard-and-fast recommendations Wednesday. For example, anyone who tests positive for Covid should follow health department guidance — meaning they should isolate for at least five days. Covid tests should be used only for symptomatic students and staff, and schools should not require a negative test result for kids to attend class.
But for the most part, decisions relating to Covid-19 will be in the hands of school nurses.
Nurses will also determine when to administer tests to students, when to send tests home, when to allow a symptomatic student to stay in class and when to require a symptomatic student to wear a mask.
Before the end of school in the spring, state officials shipped 325,000 rapid Covid-19 tests to schools across the state. Schools will be able to order more from the state if needed during the year, officials said.
The memo suggests that education officials name a “school nurse leader” to lead Covid-19 responses.
“For the upcoming school year, our approach to testing will be a bit different,” French and Levine wrote. “With testing no longer a first-line strategy for COVID-19 prevention in Vermont, school nurses should revisit their pre-COVID-19 school sickness policies. This is an opportunity to identify possible improvements based upon lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping in mind public health principles in the prevention of all respiratory diseases.”
