Health and Safety

On-Campus Protocols

Keep children with flu or cold-like symptoms (fever--oral temp of >100.4F, diarrhea, vomiting, runny nose, cough, shortness of breath) home until they have not had a fever (without medication) or vomiting for at least 24 hours. Daily Health and Safety checks will be performed on-site. Students will be monitored for signs of illness throughout the day and sent home if symptoms develop.

Health Screening

Before entering the school building, all students (or guardians on behalf of students) must respond to the prescribed health screening. If a student (or guardian on behalf of a student) responds with an affirmative to any of the screening questions, s/he must not enter the school building and must return home with their guardian.

Families will drive on Hearst Ave to the designated gate (please see “dropoff procedure” above). Families will remain in their car where they will greet a staff/faculty member who will ask the student/guardian the “Health Screening Questions”. Once the student clears the screening, s/he will be permitted on campus.

Cleaning and Disinfecting

Teachers and students will be equipped with cleaning supplies so they have the ability to also disinfect as they see fit. A thorough cleaning will be completed at the end of each day.

Staff and faculty will stress the importance of hand hygiene when using the restroom and teach students how to properly wash their hands. Hand sanitizing stations will be present in every classroom and throughout many other areas of the campus.

Faculty and Staff Training

Faculty and staff will be trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of student illness such as cough, fever, shortness of breath, or other COVID-19 symptoms. If a student exhibits symptoms of COVID-19, faculty or staff will send the student to the main office where they will wait in the isolation room while the office administrator or principal contacts the student’s parent/guardian to identify if the student has any history of allergies.

The school principal will consult with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and implement the procedure to send the sick person home from school. Any individual who was in close contact with the ill person will be notified and the areas used by the sick individual will be cleaned and disinfected thoroughly.

Hygiene

Signs will be posted around the school and in the restrooms to reinforce daily hygiene practices.

Staff and faculty members will explicitly teach and reinforce prevention behaviors of hand-washing. Teachers will build classroom routines for sanitizing hands before entering and leaving the classroom.

Teach students to sneeze into their shirt. Parents will be notified if their child is displaying any symptoms and must be picked up. Students cannot return to school until they are cleared to do so by their PCP.

When students use a tissue, they must throw the tissue directly into the trash and then wash or sanitize their hands with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol to clean their hands.

Students can keep a personal ziplock bag in their space so that they can dispose used tissues from a travel size pack directly into the ziplock bag and dispose the ziplock bag at home.

Discipline Policy for Misuse of Protective Equipment and Violation of Social Distancing

Warning: Student writes a reflection after receiving a warning from the teacher. Reflection is sent home to the parents.

Removal from Classroom: After three warnings, the student is sent to Ms. Kimble to finish their day of study with a call home.

Suspension: If the student continues to misuse protective equipment after a removal from the classroom, the student’s guardian will be informed that they may not return to school until a meeting between the student, guardian(s), and Ms. Kimble occurs.

Physical Distancing and Cohorts

Physical distancing is no longer required.
Because of the importance of in-person learning, CDC, CDPH, and SFDPH do not recommend physical distancing if it will limit full enrollment. Schools that opt to use physical distancing to further reduce COVID-19 risk should:
- - Prioritize full enrollment over physical distancing.
  - Balance distancing with students’ developmental and socio-emotional needs.
Cohorting is no longer required. SFDPH does not recommend cohorting if it will limit full enrollment for in-person learning. Schools should prioritize full enrollment over strict cohorting.
Staff and volunteers may work with more than one class or group.
There is no maximum group or class size.

School Supplies

Students are permitted to share toys, school supplies, play areas, and area rugs.
Shared toys will be cleaned at the end of each school day.

Face Coverings

Students in all grade levels K-12 are required to wear face coverings at all times, while at school, unless exempted.

All staff must use face coverings in accordance with CDPH guidelines

CPDH recommends disposable 3-ply surgical masks, which are more effective than cloth face coverings
For staff, bandanas, gaiters and similar face coverings are no longer acceptable.
In limited situations where a face covering cannot be used for pedagogical or developmental reasons, a face shield with a drape can be used as long as the wearer maintains physical distance from others
Students will refrain from talking while eating lunch in the classroom since masks are off during that time.

Protective Equipment and Cleaning Supplies

Each classroom will be outfitted with protective equipment and cleaning supplies for use and distribution as needed (both planned and unplanned). The Essential Protective Equipment includes face coverings, hand sanitizer, disinfecting spray, disposable gloves, wastebaskets, and paper towels.

Each staff member will be trained on how and when to properly clean and disinfect classroom and workspaces and will record each time the room is cleaned.

Ventilation

All windows and doors will be kept open during the school day.

Students may wear jackets while they are at school.

During wildfires or other times when air quality is poor, we will prioritize maintaining healthy air quality indoors. We will remain open even if we need to close your windows or decrease outdoor air intake by our ventilation system during these times. We will continue other precautions, especially wearing face masks.

COVID-19 Testing

Testing is most useful when people are more likely to be infected, for example, after close contact to someone with COVID-19, with higher-risk activities like indoor sports, and when community levels of COVID-19 are high or rising rapidly. Testing is less useful when the chance of infection is very low, for example, for people who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19, with low-risk activities like classroom instruction, and when community levels of COVID-19 are low.

CDPH has updated the 2021-22 school year guidance to include testing considerations at K-12 schools. In San Francisco, routine testing of students without symptoms or known COVID-19 exposures over the past year has not been helpful in detecting infections.

As a result, SFDPH has determined the best path forward for San Francisco at this time is the following:

SFDPH does not recommend routine testing of the following groups: o Staff and students without COVID-19 symptoms or known exposures. o Staff or students who have had COVID-19 in the last 3 months, confirmed by a lab test. San Francisco Department of Public Health Updated 7/28/2021. https://sfcdcp.org/school Page 7 of 13
SFDPH continues to recommend testing for the following groups: o People with symptoms of COVID-19 regardless of vaccination status. o People with close contact to someone with COVID-19 who are not fully vaccinated and have not had COVID-19 in the last 3 months.
For information about required testing for San Francisco schools, see Health Officer Directive No. 2020-33 at https://www.sfdph.org/directives

Health and Safety Maintenance Practices

The safety of employees and students is the top priority. Upon reopening, St. Finn Barr Catholic School will be completely cleaned and disinfected. Further, St. Finn Barr will continue to adhere to all necessary safety precautions.

All cleaning supplies are in compliance with the approved disinfectants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) List N, Disinfectants for use Against SARS-COV-2. Cleaning will occur at the end of each day while no one is on campus in addition to the daily cleaning teachers maintain during instructional time.

Planning for Social Distancing Outside of the Classroom

Visitor Policy

All visitors must schedule an appointment through the school office before they are allowed to visit the school's campus. Visitors must complete a health check before they are permitted in the school building. The office administrator will be available via phone or email at l.richardson@stfinnbarr.org.

St. Finn Barr Catholic School will limit non-essential visitors who are not fully vaccinated, including volunteers and activities involving external groups, as required by CDPH.

School Gatherings

Gatherings are permitted to resume. If there is a large gathering that can take place via Zoom, the school will opt to take the extra measure of safety and hold these gatherings via Zoom.

Back to School Night on August 26th, 2021 will take place virtually via a Zoom Webinar. Information will be posted through Beehively.

Closed Communal Spaces

The hall will be closed for school lunches. If students purchase lunch from the lunch program, a pre-packaged lunch will be delivered directly to the classroom. Students will eat lunch in the classrooms while refraining from talking.

Extended Care

Extended Care will resume on the first day of school, Wednesday, August 18, 2021, at 12:30pm.

Students and staff will wear facemasks.

Sports

As of July 28, 2021, sports program are permitted to resume. We will continue to update guardians as more information comes through.

Travel

The State of California has updated its travel policy with the following provisions:

Non-essential travel (for recreational purposes) should be limited to 120 miles from the person’s home.
Californians who travel outside the state or the country must quarantine for 10 days upon their return to California.
Visitors to California from other states and countries must also quarantine for 10 days upon their entry into California.

With this in mind, please limit recreational travel to no more than 120 miles from your home. If you must travel outside of California or outside of the United States, you will need to quarantine for 10 days upon your return to California.

If students have visitors from outside of California, they will need to self-quarantine for 14 days before returning to school.

Managing Infection Notifications

New rules on which students must quarantine after COVID-19 exposure at school

People in the same class or cohort do not have to quarantine if the school does not know who was a close contact to a case. In school settings, it may be difficult to know who has had close contact. People should be considered close contacts when the school or program is reasonably sure that they spent at least 15 minutes within 6 feet of the infected person during the course of a day. People are not considered close contacts simply because they were in the same group or cohort. If the program cannot determine this or does not know, the person should not be considered a close contact.

Modified Quarantine for TK-12 Students after Close Contact to COVID-19 in School

CDPH now allows students who are exposed to COVID-19 in school classrooms to continue attending school during quarantine, under certain conditions. This is because of the low risk of spread of COVID-19 between students in TK-12 schools, even when community levels of COVID-19 have been high, and the importance of minimizing days missed from school. Students in TK-12 schools who are not fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and have close contact in an indoor classroom setting at school can continue to attend school during quarantine if both the student and the infected person were wearing face masks consistently and correctly during the close contact.

This “modified quarantine” applies only to students who were exposed to COVID-19 in school. It does not apply to students who were exposed to COVID-19 at home, outside of school, or during extracurricular activities like school sports.

To attend school during quarantine, the student must:

Continue to wear a face mask in school
Get tested for COVID-19 twice a week, and
Remain free of any COVID-19 symptoms during this time. San Francisco Department of Public Health Updated 7/28/2021. https://sfcdcp.org/school Page 12 of 13 Students must quarantine except to attend school. Students must not participate in activities outside of school or extracurricular activities at school, including sports, during their modified quarantine. For more information, see CDPH guidance for more information: https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/COVID-19/K-12-Guidance-2021-22-SchoolYear.aspx

Notice of Student Infection to School Community

In the event that a student is determined to have COVID-19, notice will be given to those school community members who sustained prolonged exposure (>10 minutes) with or near the students during the previous 14 day period. This notice will be provided on a standard exposure form that contains non-identifiable information regarding the student. Unless a specific Personally Identifiable Information (PII) release is obtained from the custodial parent, release of information regarding infection of a student must be managed to avoid FERPA violation See 34 C.F.R. § 99.31(b)(1).

Notice of Student Infection to Media/External Community

Pursuant to FERPA guidelines, under no circumstance will identifying information regarding any student be released to media/external outlets. Further, it is the position of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, Department of Catholic Schools that no communication regarding possible or confirmed cases of COVID-19 at school sites be discussed with external outlets with the notable exception of the associated public health department.

Notice of Student Infection to Local Health Department

FERPA permits educational agencies and institutions to disclose, without prior written consent, PII from the student’s education record to appropriate parties in connection with an emergency, if knowledge of that information is necessary to protect the health or safety of a student or other individuals. 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(b)(1)(I); 34 C.F.R. §§ 99.31(a)(1o) and 99.36. If local public health authorities determine that a public health emergency, such as COVID-19 is a significant threat to students or other individuals in the community, an educational agency or institution in that community may determine that an emergency exists as well.

Under the FERPA health or safety emergency exception, an educational agency or institution is responsible for making a determination, on a case-by-case basis, whether to disclose PII from education records, and it may take into account the totality of the circumstances pertaining to the threat. See 34 C.F.R. § 99.36 (c). If the educational agency or institution determines that there is an articulable and significant threat to health or safety of the student or another individual and that certain parties need the PII from education records, to protect the health or safety of the student or another individual, it may disclose that information to such parties without consent. This includes releasing information about infected student(s) to local health officials.

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