A Clark County School District employee slides a breakfast across a table to a student on the first day back to in-person learning under a hybrid instructional model at K.O. Knudson Academy of Arts middle school Monday, March 22, 2021.
Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022 | 9:44 p.m.
Clark County School District officials are asking parents to perform health checks on their children before sending them to school, which resumes Wednesday after the two-week winter break.
If a child is displaying symptoms of COVID-19 — fever, sore throat, chills or a cough, among others — they should stay home and be tested for the virus. (Call the COVID-19 hotline at 702-799-4322 to report a positive test result, recent exposure to an infected individual or possible symptoms).
The district is attempting to restart in-person learning for more than 300,000 students as cases of coronavirus are surging throughout the Las Vegas area. The Southern Nevada Health District today reported 1,936 new COVID-19 cases and 38 COVID-related deaths. There were slightly more than 8,000 cases over the three-day holiday weekend.
“The goal is to continue in-person learning. We know what the disruption to learning does, so we are working with (school) districts to make sure they have proper mitigation efforts in place and that they are controlling outbreaks,” DuAne Young, policy director for Gov. Steve Sisolak, said last week.
Mitigation measures for CCSD will include a seating chart for students, which will make COVID tracing more simple, officials said in a note to parents.
Children will also practice social distancing and wear face coverings. It is the same strategy as when schools returned to in-person instruction last August after months of virtual classes.
Schools will also be armed with plenty of personal protective equipment and ample quantities of cleaning supplies, the district said. Schools will be disinfected each day.
The return to the classroom comes as the virus is hitting children hard. Nationally, about 325,000 cases of COVID among children were reported for the week ending Dec. 30. That’s a 64% increase from the week ending Dec. 23, when there were 199,000 reported cases.
Any student who comes within 3 feet of someone who tests positive for COVID-19, regardless of mask usage, will be quarantined, the district said. Here’s the district’s quarantine guidelines.
About 37,424 Nevada children ages 5-11 have had at least one shot of vaccine, according to state health data. That amounts to 13% of kids in that age range initiating vaccination; 6.5% have completed their inoculation series.
Another 180,762 young people ages 12-19 have had at least one shot.
