Howard Asks State for Revised Student Quarantine Rules
HARTFORD- With students in Stonington and North Stonington missing a significant number of in-class instruction days due to COVID quarantine, State Rep. Greg Howard (R-43) is calling for new state guidelines on student COVID quarantine policies to minimize student absences citing data from Massachusetts, a state with Covid statistics comparable to CT, which shows that in-school transmission is rare.
Today, Howard sent a letter to both the Connecticut Commissioners of the Departments of Public Health (DPH) and Education (SDE).
In the letter Howard is asking the state to reconsider and revise the current 10-day quarantine, which is called for when a person is not fully vaccinated and has not tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 90 days prior to the current exposure, remain home in self-quarantine for the recommended 10 days from last exposure to the person diagnosed with COVID-19 or after 7 days with a documented negative test result at day 5 or later, consistent with school district policy.
“Each day in my district, children are being prohibited from attending school with their peers due to quarantine protocols. Not only is this extremely detrimental to our children’s education, it also puts a significant burden on working families in Connecticut that must find arrangements for their young children staying unexpectedly home for an extended period. The extra burden on our school staff and the emotional toll, specifically on our school nurses who are constantly sending kids home and out in tears who just want to be in school, can no longer be ignored,” said Rep. Greg Howard.
The 10-day quarantine policy has caused students in Rep. Howard’s two school districts to lose approximately two thousand days of in-class instruction. To date there has been one child total out of hundreds that quarantined who tested positive.
Howard asking DPH and SDE to adopt the Massachusetts ‘Test and Stay Policy’ which permits school districts to participate in either rapid testing, pooled testing, test and stay, or a combination of all three saving nearly 18,000 in-person school days for their school-aged children.