BOSTON — Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.
Gone are mandatory isolation periods and masking. But will schools and childcare centers agree?
In case you’ve lost track, before Friday, all Americans, including schoolchildren, were required to stay home for at least five days if they had COVID-19 and then wear a mask for a period of time, according to the Centers for Disease. Control and prevention.
With COVID deaths and hospitalizations declining, the CDC says children can return to school if their overall symptoms improve and they are fever-free for 24 hours without medication. Students are “encouraged” to wear a mask upon return.
Still, the change may not affect how individual schools urge parents to respond if their children become ill. Schools and child care providers have a mixed record of following CDC recommendations and often look to local authorities for the ultimate word. And sometimes other goals, such as reducing absenteeism, can influence a state or district’s decisions.
The result could be a confusing set of policies across states and districts, not to mention workplaces, confusing parents whose lives have long been upended by the virus.
“This is so confusing,” said Gloria Cunningham, a single mother in the Boston area. “I just don’t know what to think about COVID right now. Is it still a monster?”
Cunningham, who manages a local store for a national restaurant chain, said her company requires her to take 10 days off if she contracts COVID-19. And the school system where her son is in second grade is still sending home COVID test kits for kids to use before returning to school after a long break.
“I feel like we need to get rid of anything that treats COVID differently or maintain all the precautions,” she said.
The public education system has long had varying policies on COVID. During the 2021-2022 school year, only 18 states followed CDC recommendations for wearing masks in the classroom. When the CDC lifted mask guidelines in February 2022, states like Massachusetts followed suit, but California kept the mask requirement for schools.
And in the childcare world, some providers have long had stricter testing and isolation protocols than the CDC has recommended. The reasons ranged from trying to prevent outbreaks to keeping staff healthy – both for their personal safety and to keep childcare facilities open.
Some states moved to more lenient guidelines before the CDC. California and Oregon recently rescinded COVID-19 isolation requirements, and many districts followed their advice.
In an effort to minimize absenteeism and address an epidemic of chronic absenteeism, California has encouraged children to come to school if they are mildly ill and said students who test positive for the coronavirus but are asymptomatic will attend school can go. The Los Angeles and San Diego school systems, among others, have adopted this policy.
But the majority of major urban districts across the country have still asked parents to isolate their children for at least five days before returning to school. Some, including Boston and Atlanta, have required students to wear masks for an additional five days and report positive COVID-19 test results to the school.
Some school leaders suggest the CDC’s previous five-day isolation requirement was already only loosely enforced.
The official policy in Burlington, Massachusetts, is that students must stay home for five days if they test positive. But Superintendent Eric Conti said the real policy is, in fact, “It’s a virus. Deal with it.”
That’s because COVID is managed at home using the honor system.
“Without in-school testing, no one can enforce a five-day COVID policy,” he said via text message.
Ridley School District in suburban Philadelphia already had a policy similar to the new CDC guidelines, said Superintendent Lee Ann Wentzel. Students who test positive for COVID must be fever-free without medication for at least 24 hours before returning to school. When they return, they must mask up for five days. Wentzel said the district is now considering dropping the masking requirement due to the new CDC guidelines.
The specific guidelines of a school or daycare center are of great significance for working parents who have to miss work if their child cannot go to school or daycare. In October 2023, during simultaneous surges of COVID, respiratory syncytial virus, and influenza, 104,000 adults reported job loss due to childcare issues, the highest number in at least a decade. That number has fallen: Last month, child care problems caused 41,000 adults to miss work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Melissa Colgrosso’s Child Care Center in West Virginia eliminated special COVID guidelines about a year ago, she said. Now they are the same as other diseases: a child must be free of serious symptoms such as fever for at least 24 hours before returning to the center.
“We certainly treat COVID just like we would treat the flu or hand, foot and mouth disease,” said Colagrosso, CEO of A Place To Grow Children’s Center in Oak Hill.
As for children without symptoms testing positive for COVID? Most parents have stopped testing children unless they have symptoms, Colagrasso said, so it’s a dilemma she hasn’t encountered.
Still, some parents fear the relaxed rules are putting their community in greater danger. Evelyn Alemán leads a group of Latino and native immigrant parents in Los Angeles County. The parents she represents, many of whom suffer from chronic illnesses and lack of access to health care, panicked when California eliminated isolation requirements in January.
“I don’t think they’re thinking about the impact on our families,” she said of California officials. “It feels like they don’t care – that we’re almost expendable.”
Other impacts of the pandemic also persist even as restrictions are lifted. In Ridley, the district surrounding Philadelphia, more students have withdrawn and are struggling to interact with peers in person, said Wentzel, the superintendent. Interest in school dances has plummeted.
“Emotionally,” Wentzel said, “they’re having problems.”
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Balingit reported from Washington.
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