Beginning Monday, Oct. 25, 2021, students and staff will no longer participate in a daily health screening that includes a “symptoms, temperature, and COVID contact” checklist and daily temperature check in order to enter school district buildings. The City School District of New Rochelle will reinstitute this practice upon being required to do so by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or the Westchester County Department of Health (WCDOH).
The rationale for eliminating the Daily Health Screening Questionnaire and Temperature Assessment is based upon:- On March 17, 2021, the CDC issued new guidance related to “daily health screening in public schools.” Effective that date, the CDC no longer recommends schools with “low to moderate” transmission rates conduct symptoms screening for all students in grades K-12 on a routine (e.g. daily) basis either by questionnaire or temperature assessment.
- Westchester County currently has a low infection rate of 0.89%, and it has been moderate to low since Aug. 15, 2021.
- The school district’s Interim Medical Director, Dr. Louis Corsaro, suggests that parents/guardians monitor their children for symptoms by asking the following health-related questions:
- "Are you feeling well today?"
- "Do you feel well enough to go to school?"
- "Do you have a fever?"
- "Do you feel warm?"
- Students who are sick should not attend school, and parents should have their child(ren) assessed by their primary care physician. In addition, please notify your child's school nurse about any illness. As Superintendent Jonathan Raymond suggests in his automated phone calls to homes, please keep a child home when he or she is sick.
- The addition of the school district’s COVID PCR Saliva Testing Program, scheduled to commence the week of Oct. 25, 2021, is another layer of mitigation that the school district is implementing for the safety of our students and staff.
In lieu of the daily health screening questionnaire and temperature assessment, the school district will send a daily text reminder to parents to do a symptoms check of their child.