PCSD Adjusts Quarantine Practices Based on the Latest DPH Guidance

Dragon's Corner

Dear Pickens County School District Family,
Throughout the pandemic, our district has made every effort to follow governor and DPH
guidance as much as possible. We understand the hardship this has placed on families in the
county as many have endured multiple quarantines of a child due to contact tracing. Yesterday,
January 6th, the governor and DPH acknowledged this hardship and loss of instructional time
with revised guidance effective immediately.
This new guidance has the goal of facilitating in-person learning by allowing those
students that would have been quarantined due to contact tracing to remain in school so long as
the exposure occurred in the school setting and the student is asymptomatic (showing no
symptoms). We will be adopting this new guidance effective Monday, January 10, 2022.
We will shift our focus away from contact tracing and quarantine to monitoring children
for signs of illness. Moving forward, we will be sending out letters notifying you that your child
was in class, on the bus, participated in a sport, etc. with a positive case just as we do with any
other communicable disease. We are asking that parents assist us in this endeavor by carefully
monitoring your child each morning before sending them to school and not sending them if they
exhibit any signs of illness at all. Pickens County Schools will strongly encourage students
receiving notice of having been in a setting with a positive individual wear a mask for 10 days
after notification.
We also encourage parents to continue to take advantage of our onsite medical staff
provided through Pickens Primary Care to have your child tested if they exhibit any signs of
sickness and to notify the school or the PCSD COVID hotline when your child tests positive for
COVID. We will continue to notify DPH when a notifiable disease is reported and alert DPH of
concerns with clusters and outbreaks which may require immediate public health intervention.
Any student that is currently in quarantine and is asymptomatic (showing no symptoms)
will return to school on Monday, January 10, 2022, and may begin to participate in extracurricular activities immediately.
While the constant change in guidance has been frustrating at times, we want to thank
the families of Pickens County for their support throughout this pandemic. We hope that with
the help of our parents, we can even more effectively monitor students for symptoms while also
meeting the new DPH standard of keeping healthy students in class.
If you are the parent of a medically fragile student and have concerns, please contact
our Director of Health Services, Ms. Gail Smith at (706) 299-2946. Thank you for your support
during this challenging time.
All the best,
Mr. Tony Young
Superintendent

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