Throughout the global COVID pandemic, St. Louis Park Public Schools has used guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) to determine mitigation strategies to keep students, staff and families safe.
New guidance (issued February 25) factored into the decision that was announced last week that most students and staff were no longer required to wear face coverings in our schools. As a result of that decision, the District has made several other changes to its COVID mitigation strategies:
Masking: K-12
Mask wearing is recommended for all stakeholders regardless of vaccination status. Students, staff, and visitors may choose to wear a mask based on personal preference and/or informed by personal risk; and their choice to do so will be supported in all district buildings.
PLEASE NOTE: Face coverings will be required when five percent or more of the students and/or staff who attend or work at a St. Louis Park Public School or building test positive for COVID-19, or when community levels of COVID-19 are high. On March 16, community levels of COVID-19 are low.
Contact Tracing: K-12
New CDC guidance encourages health departments to focus contact tracing on high-risk settings such as long-term care facilities, correctional facilities, and homeless shelters. Universal case investigation and contact tracing for COVID are no longer recommended in K-12 schools. Effective Thursday, March 17, 2022, St. Louis Park Public Schools will suspend contact tracing and the identification of close contacts of positive cases. Because we are not contact tracing we will not be enforcing recess pods.
Masking & Contact Tracing: Early Learning at Central
Please note that masks are still required to be worn by students and staff at the Central Early Learning Center. This decision was based on the fact that the overall population of early learners are ineligible at this time to receive COVID vaccinations. This decision will be revisited once vaccinations are made available to this age group.
Quarantining
Due to the fact that St. Louis Park Public Schools will no longer be contact tracing, students will no longer be identified as close contacts or needing to quarantine due to any potential exposures at school. Additionally, the district’s COVID dashboard will no longer include quarantine data (beginning March 23). It is recommended that students and staff members who believe they may have been exposed to a positive case get tested. Unvaccinated individuals who are exposed to a positive case, still need to quarantine for five days.
