Jordan School District is Changing Quarantine?

Everyone knows that in 2020, nothing is normal and nothing goes according to plan. Everyday life has changed for everyone, especially teenagers. Usually, high school students are worried about their grades or who they are going to ask to homecoming. This school year, however, has been a drastic change. Students are preoccupied with figuring out online school and wondering if they are even going to have a senior prom. The thing that they probably dread most is that call from the attendance office saying that they have to quarantine for two weeks due to a positive test for coronavirus in one of their classes.

In the Jordan School District, contact tracing protocol has been set in place in order to limit the spread of Covid-19 as much as possible. This means that seating charts are no longer just an option; students must sit in their assigned seats so that administration can trace every person a student was in close contact with for longer than 15 minutes. If a student tests positive for COVID, the school is notified, and every person they sat next to in their classes, according to the seating chart, is alerted and put in quarantine. This plan is in place to keep the disease from spreading as rapidly, especially because 80% of people present asymptomatic or with such mild symptoms that they pass it off as a seasonal cold, according to the World Health Organization.

Now, according to a new guideline the Jordan School District released on October 8, students are required to stay in quarantine for a minimum of 7 days. If after that 7 days, a student tests negative for coronavirus, they are allowed to end the traditional quarantine early and return to school.

Staying at home for an extended period of time is not enjoyable, especially because you cannot see your friends or go anywhere. While it may seem like a waste of time because you don’t feel sick, the protocol is proving to be effective in the Jordan School District, especially at Herriman High School. Herriman presents with a substantially smaller number of cases than many other schools within the district boundaries. This new guideline will continue to keep students safe, but also make it so that the time they are absent is more manageable and less daunting.