COVID Safety Guidance

Face Coverings: CDPH still strongly recommends indoor masking for all staff and students. At this time, Alameda County does not require masking indoors, but it could change this policy at any time, at which point indoor masking will again be required.

• Staff are required to mask up after returning from a positive-case isolation period, between days 5 & 10 after their positive test. Staff members who have had 3+ exposures will also need to mask for 14 days.

Testing: Use of rapid tests (instead of PCR tests) is recommended by CDPH.

• Consistent with CDPH and Board guidance, we are not offering regular on-site testing at every campus for the 22-23 school year.

• We are providing at-home tests for all staff and students to pick up at back-to-school events at their schools before August 8. Please reach out to megan.phuong@ousd.org if you have questions about the back-to-school allotment of at-home tests.

• We are again operating regional testing hubs that are open to staff, students, and family members.

• We will also distribute at-home tests to all school sites before every major school break of at least a week, including Thanksgiving Break, Winter Break, and Spring Break. Additional distributions may also be planned for surges or periods of high transmission, as determined by the county public health department.

• Everyone can also order additional at-home test kits for their entire household from the federal government.

• Kaiser members can also pick up at-home tests free of charge at Kaiser or order them from the kp.org website.

Indoor Air Quality: We will continue to use and maintain our upgraded air filtration systems in our schools and offices, including in-room air purifiers and MERV-13 filters in built-in HVAC systems.

Symptoms & Positive Case Protocols: Please report any positive case to contacttracing_staff@ousd.org or contacttracing_student@ousd.org. For staff cases, please include the staff’s contact information/phone number.

• Our central team will continue to send out notifications to the positive individual with instructions about isolation and will send a school-wide notification about the positive case(s). The teachers of record for positive students will also receive exposure notifications.

• Deep cleaning/sanitation is no longer part of the positive case response protocol according to CalOSHA and CDPH guidance.

• Staff and students who are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms should still stay home until they have a negative test.

• Wellness/Isolation rooms are no longer required. Students should wear masks, if symptomatic or testing positive, while waiting to get picked up.

• No additional actions are required by the school in response to a positive case--send in the name for the positive case, and if there are additional known close contacts (like paraprofessionals), those email addresses can be entered here. All other notifications will be handled centrally.

Vaccines: While strongly recommended, COVID-19 vaccinations are currently not required for any student to attend school in person. In June 2022, the OUSD Board aligned the timeline for implementation of any vaccine mandate to the state, which has yet to actually set a date for any required COVID-19 student vaccinations.

• We need to keep strongly recommending that all students get vaccinated and boosted to maximize their protection against COVID-19. We will continue to offer vaccine clinics at our school sites throughout the year.

• All staff are still required to be fully vaccinated (2 shots of Pfizer/Moderna or 1 shot of J&J) or to submit proof of weekly tests to the Talent Department.

Safety Leads: We will still need to have safety leads at least through December 2022, to ensure adequate supply of PPE at each school site, request air purifier filter replacements as needed, and to manage distributions of at-home test kits at holiday breaks. Safety leads will no longer be expected to manage positive case notifications or weekly on-site testing. The stipend amounts will vary based on school size and will be reduced, as compared to the 21-22 school year. We will share more details once we ratify the details of the scope of work with all the bargaining units.

Daily Health Screenings: These are not required for any staff, student, or visitor, at any grade level, including ECE. We will continue to use ParentSquare to track positive case timelines in conjunction with the Health Tracing tool, and to follow up with positive cases and symptomatic cases at the end of their isolation periods to get them back to school/work.

Visitors on campus: Visitors are welcome on campus, as long as they follow all site protocols for signing in/out.