Superintendent's Update - January 7, 2022

COVID-19 IN SCHOOLS UPDATE

First, we are thankful for everyone who has contributed to our first week of in-person instruction following the break. Information overload is exhausting for people and I want to start with a simple "thank you" to all.

Covid Clinic has tested 6,001 staff and students from Wednesday, December 8, through Wednesday, January 5. Of that number, 141 individuals have tested positive. The remainder of our positive results have come from the take home student tests and other sources. We will report numbers for future weeks in our updates and on our website.

Cubberley daily testing will no longer be open to the general public. We are proud to have offered the service to the community since November. With Omicron and our commitment to regularly testing staff and students, Cubberley will serve as an additional daily (Monday - Friday) testing site exclusively for PAUSD staff and students. This is in addition to regular testing on sites.

Community member appointments previously made through Covid Clinic for our Cubberley site will be voided. The PAUSD clinic will run from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Those wishing to test later in the day should arrive an hour early to ensure getting tested before closing.

We are in communication with a booster shot provider and hope to provide a clinic soon. We have experience hosting vaccination clinics and believe it is a tremendous service for all. PAUSD does not control the vaccination/booster distribution. We are lucky to have strong partners and a reputation for hosting quality events.

The information below is cumbersome and sometimes not intuitive. If you have specific questions, please contact your school site directly. We are recommending that students transition from cloth to surgical masks. Masking and testing remain the most important routine things students can do to stay safe. Again, we hope to host a vaccination/booster clinic in the near future.

Our Covid dashboard will update each Tuesday, aligning with the Santa Clara County reporting cycle. For this week, we are posting the numbers today. Reported cases come in sporadically through the day and into the evening. The numbers reported today were accurate at noon. To clarify, these are reported positive cases. "Exposure to site" means the person was on the site when considered positive. "No exposure to site" means the person tested positive before our return and was not on a PAUSD site.

Under the category of "can't make this up" we were informed that the CDPH is making further revisions to the guidelines today. They may not be reflected in the information below. Things change quickly and often!

COVID GUIDELINES FROM PUBLIC HEALTH

Individuals with Symptoms

• Individuals with symptoms should stay home and get a COVID-19 test. At-home tests are not acceptable for returning to school from symptoms. Please get an antigen or PCR test with Covid Clinic or your own health care provider.
• Those with negative COVID-19 tests may return to school once their symptoms have improved.
• We ask that all sick students and employees stay home while sick, even with a negative test result.
• Consider all inconclusive/indeterminate and at-home positive tests as positive, and notify your school site immediately.

Positive Cases

• Everyone must be isolated for at least 5 days.
• If no symptoms and a negative COVID-19 test on or after day 5, they may return to school the following day. We recommend an antigen test, as you may continue to test positive on a PCR for up to 90 days.
• If they have symptoms or continue to test positive, they may return to work on day 11 if no fever for 24 hours or longer and other symptoms are improved.

Household Close Contacts

• All household members should get tested immediately when there is a positive case in the home.
• Positive individuals should try to isolate themselves away from the rest of the household.
• Unvaccinated family members must quarantine at home for 5 days after the end of the positive individual's isolation period.
• Vaccinated family members may continue to attend school if they have no symptoms.
• All family members who test negative, should continue to test on Day 5 and Day 15 from the original positive test.

Exposures Outside of School

• All individuals who are knowingly exposed to a positive case outside of school should get tested immediately and again on or after Day 5 from the exposure date.
• Unvaccinated individuals should quarantine at home for 10 days. If they have a negative test on or after day 5, they may shorten the quarantine period to return to school and activities on day 8.
• Vaccinated individuals may continue to attend school and should monitor for symptoms.

WEBSITE STATUS UPDATE

Our website host and provider, Finalsite, is currently experiencing an outage due to disruption of certain computer systems on its network which is impacting thousands of schools worldwide. They have been working to identify the issue and secure their systems which included proactively taking certain systems offline.

Websites are beginning to return online as Finalsite works to restore full functionality to their systems as quickly and safely as possible. Our best estimate at this point in time is a return to full functionality by early next week.

We understand the importance of our website for sharing critical information, and Finalsitehas dedicated all resources on resolving the issue. We appreciate your patience and understanding and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

In the meantime, should you need time-sensitive information, please contact us via Let's Talk!, phone, or email. Our main messaging platform, ParentSquare, is unaffected and continues with normal operations.