Family Guide:

Preventing Illness & Contagious Disease in School

2023-2024

Student Success & Health Department

Office of Student Support Services

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WELCOME MESSAGE

The following slides provide useful health information about illness prevention and how the school responds to contagious disease so that your student can stay healthy and ready to learn.

�All of us have a role in preventing communicable disease:

• Public health continues to emphasize personal responsibility to protect oneself and others, primarily through prevention.
• PPS’s communicable disease response assumes shared district- and individual- responsibility.

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Read on to learn more about how PPS will work with you to keep students, families and staff healthy.

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If your student feels sick, please keep them home and report illness to the school.

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• Families should review the Symptom-Based Exclusion Chart and OHA’s Communicable Disease Guidance to know when to keep students home due to excludable symptoms or a communicable disease.

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Keep Students Home When Sick

If Your Student Tests Positive for COVID-19

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It is not required for you to report your student’s positive test result to the school.

If your student has COVID-19, they should stay home from school based on any excludable symptoms they are exhibiting. They do not need to isolate for a set number of days, but should stay home until symptoms resolve (see below).

Be aware that someone with COVID-19 can get others sick. If you have COVID-19:

• Stay home until you have not had a fever for 24 hours without using fever reducing medication and other COVID-19 symptoms are improving.
• Avoid contact with individuals at high risk for severe disease for 10 days.
• Mask when you are around other people in the 10 days after you become sick or test positive.

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COVID-19 Testing Resources

Diagnostic (Symptom-based) Testing At-School

Please complete and submit to your school office a COVID-19 General Consent Form if you want your student to receive diagnostic (symptom-based) testing at school.

Students with a completed consent form on file can receive a BinaxNOW test if they:

• Develop symptoms compatible with COVID-19 while at school.
• Have been exposed to COVID-19.

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Rapid Tests for At-Home Use

May be provided to your students to take home when they have symptoms compatible with COVID-19. Families may request a take home COVID-19 Test from the school at any time.

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If your student develops symptoms compatible with COVID-19 or has been exposed to COVID-19, your school may offer:

Vaccines offer safe, easy, and effective protection from potentially serious and sometimes fatal diseases. They help students stay healthy.

• At the beginning of the school year, families should provide to their school office immunization status information for their student.
• Students in any grade can get vaccinations and boosters like the flu shot at any PPS’s onsite Student Health Center. Click here for a list of MCHD Student Health Centers or visit the OHSU Benson Wellness Center.
• Students will need to be up to date on their school-required vaccines by Wednesday, February 21, 2024.

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Stay Up To Date With Immunizations

Students, staff, volunteers, and visitors may choose to wear a mask based on their personal risk level for illness. However, it is important to know when masking can make a difference in reducing the spread of illness when it is present at school.

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• Mask if you have respiratory symptoms like coughing, sneezing, and/or shortness of breath.
• Mask for 10 days after you develop symptoms or test positive for COVID-19.
• Consider masking for 10 days after your last exposure to COVID-19.

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Choose to Mask at Anytime

Teach students to practice healthy hygienic behaviors like handwashing and ‘covering their cough’

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Wash Your Hands

Cover Your Cough

Schools Continue To Use HEPA Filters to Increase Airflow and Circulation

Clean air is essential for living and learning, and effective ventilation is an important prevention strategy to combat airborne viruses.

• PPS tests, inspects, and maintains air filtration systems that improve air quality in every school.

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• High-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) ventilators are placed in each classroom and higher-risk areas, e.g. Symptom spaces

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Schools Continue to Clean and Disinfect Regularly

Custodians are an integral part of maintaining a clean and sanitary school environment by helping clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces.

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• Schools alert custodians about areas that need enhanced cleaning and disinfection as directed by the MESD Communicable Disease Team when there is a possible outbreak or increased illness in school.

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PPS aligns its communicable disease response with Oregon’s Communicable Disease Guidance for Schools,which means students should not be in school when they have certain symptoms or are diagnosed with a restrictable medical condition.

Our Why and Theory of Action: Racial Equity (standard 3)

Instructional Leadership: Curriculum & Instruction

(standard 4,6,7)

Data-Driven Improvement

(standard 4, 10)

Culturally-

Specific Community Building & Engagement

(standard 5, 8)

Leading Adaptive Change

(standard 10)

If Your Student Develops Symptoms At School

The school nurse and/or the School Health Assistant (SHA) play a vital role in supporting students who are injured, have health conditions, or become ill at school.

• Your student may be placed in the Health Room or an identified Symptom Space for further evaluation.
• Students who have symptoms that may be contagious to others will be offered a mask.
• Make sure the school has up-to-date emergency contact information so your student can be picked up promptly if it is determined that they need to go home.

If Your Student Has a Communicable Disease

Please notify the school. The school may have follow up questions if your child is diagnosed with a CONTAGIOUS DISEASE, including:

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The school will protect your private information as required by law [OAR 333-019-0010; ORS 433.008].

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When Your Student Returns to School after an Illness

Please notify the school if your student:

• Requires MEDICATIONS during school hours.
• If your student’s illness requires antibiotics, the student must have been on antibiotics for at least 24 hours before returning to school, and longer in some cases. Antibiotics are not effective for viral illnesses.

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• Has an UNDERLYING OR CHRONIC HEALTH CONDITION.
• Your school will work with you to make a plan and address the health condition so that the student can focus on their learning.
• The school nurse may even consult with the student’s health care provider with consent from parent/guardian to discuss the health condition and necessary treatments.

Communication About Illness

Families may receive a letter from the school when:

• A suspected outbreak is occuring in a class, group, or school, i.e. a significant number of students report similar symptoms and or illness.
• The school will work with Multnomah County and the MESD Communicable Disease Team to start an investigation.

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• Students have been exposed to a communicable disease that requires the school to provide notification.
• NOTE: Schools are not responsible for notifying a school community when an individual tests positive for COVID-19.

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School-Level Communicable Disease Plan

• Every PPS school and program has a School-Level Communicable Disease Management Plan (CDMP) for the 2023-2024 School Year.

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• The CDMP provides guidance about how the school can prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from communicable disease, including but not limited to COVID-19.
• Your school’s CDMP includes all of the mitigation efforts discussed in these slides.

Thank you for helping students stay healthy and in school!