Sacramento County COVID-19 numbers are improving. Here’s when school campuses could reopen
State health officials announced on Tuesday that Sacramento County has improved its COVID-19 infection status enough to possibly reopen school campuses for all grades by mid-October.
The county, however, will have to maintain low coronavirus infection rates for the next week in order to win state approval on Sept. 29 to be moved down from the high risk purple tier to the state’s red tier, which would enable schools to reopen for in-class instruction.
“We’re not there yet,” Sacramento County health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye said. “We need to meet the criteria for two consecutive weeks. It’s the state rules.”
The moment is hopeful, especially for parents who have struggled since March with students stuck at home.
For the first time since June, the county’s infection positivity rate has dropped below 5%, the level set by the World Health Organization for safe reopening of the economy and well below the state’s 8% threshold for the red tier. The county is now registering 6.6 new COVID-19 cases per day per 100,000 residents, putting it below the state’s red-tier maximum threshold of 7 cases per capita.
Should the county achieve “red tier” status, restaurants and churches can conduct indoor dining and worship, at 25% capacity.
“We don’t want to jinx it, but it looks good,” said county health chief Dr. Peter Beilenson. “We’ll be able to surgically reopen.”
That said, it isn’t clear how many school districts will be able or willing to reopen their doors to most students by mid-October. Unlike private schools, many of the counties’ public districts operate large, densely-populated campuses, making it harder to set up ways to keep students segregated into small groups.
According to the state, schools must be in tier 2, the red tier, for at least 14 days before reopening.
Schools are not required to close if the county’s infection rate increases enough to move the county back to the more restrictive tier 1, also known as the purple tier, according to the School Re-opening Framework.
Sacramento public schools cautious about reopening
Sarah Koligian, superintendent of Folsom Cordova Unified School District, said the change in tiers gives the district potential to safely reopen campuses, but district officials are carefully monitoring their options.
Folsom Cordova Unified is holding a board meeting Thursday to approve a reopening a plan, and to also approve reopening on Sept. 28 for students with high needs — in accordance with state guidance.
But board members may need to pivot, and Folsom Cordova can potentially open as soon as Oct. 19, according to Koligian.
“We will still need to insure our classrooms are equipped with the health and safety retrofits to maintain safety protocols for increased on-campus activity,” she said.
The district has already started the waiver process to reopen its elementary school campuses sooner.
Joshua Hoover, a Folsom Cordova Unified School District board member, said he hopes the district will continue with its waiver application and plans to make schools safe, even if the county COVID-19 metrics hold. In a contract with teachers, Folsom Cordova Unified agreed to upgrade its air filtration system. Some of the filters are on back order.
“There are a lot of details that still need to be worked out,” Hoover said. “We have to kick it into high gear.”
With schools across Sacramento potentially reopening, classes may be disrupted. Students who choose to continue distance learning will need to move to school districts’ virtual academies. Or classes may have new teachers, if a teachers choose to not return back to campus because of health risks.
“The state’s risk system is certainly a major data point in our conversations to plan for a return to in-person learning,” said San Juan Unified spokesman Trent Allen. “As conditions have changed rapidly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not made any predetermined decisions and continue to monitor developments. We have committed to providing our families and staff members with at least a two-week notice prior to any return to in-person learning.”
Officials with the Elk Grove Unified and Sacramento City Unified districts told The Sacramento Bee they will continue working with the county, Sacramento County Office of Education and labor unions on their timeline for reopening.
Elk Grove Unified’s spokeswoman, Xanthi Pinkerton, said many factors, including the availability of testing, will influence their reopening timeline. Like other districts, Elk Grove Unified is following state guidance and is working on plans to provide in-person services for high need students.
But state and local health officials continue to express concerns about grouping students together and say they want to work with schools to set up protocols that will allow schools to remain open and not be forced to shut down again because of an infection outbreak.
Possible on-campus virus testing
Sacramento County health officials said they have been working with schools for several weeks to set up safety systems that include increased testing of school employees and mechanisms for isolating outbreaks that may occur.
Kasirye said the county is setting up a system that will allow school employees to be tested every two months for free under a contract the county has signed with private testing company StemExpress.
If a school suffers an outbreak, Kasirye said the county plans to set up a team that can do mobile testing on site at the school. “We want a quick turnaround.”
Officials say they hope that will allow schools to isolate outbreaks to a small group of students, often called a cohort, which could allow other students at the school to continue attending classes while the cohort affected by the positive test will quarantine for two weeks.
The county also plans to train school employees to act on the county’s behalf as “contact tracers” when someone at the school tests positive. That person would be responsible for contacting families whose children have been in contact with the infected person, to ask them to quarantine at home.
Those training sessions have not yet been set up.
Beilenson said the county is aware that many residents are suffering from the fatigue of dealing with social distancing and mask wearing, but the next few weeks could be very important.
Beilenson said he would like residents to double down on wearing masks, social distancing and refraining from in-home get-togethers, in hopes that those precautions will drop infection case levels low enough that county and school “contact tracers” will be able to stop any further outbreaks by getting the word out quickly to people who have been exposed to the virus.
He calls it the county’s “Orange by Halloween” campaign. Orange is the next COVID tier down from red. At that point, he said, the number of new cases per day could drop to levels not seen since spring.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.