Students and staff members who have been exposed to covid-19 but don’t have symptoms won’t need to quarantine under a revised health and safety plan Burrell School Board approved Tuesday.

Effective Wednesday, any students who were exposed to covid-19 but have no symptoms can return to school immediately.

Parents will still be notified by the school district when their child is exposed and they can monitor to see if they develop symptoms.

Parents had asked the school board to reconsider its quarantine policy.

Superintendent Shannon Wagner said she researched school exposure cases and found that less than 3% of students exposed to covid-19 at school tested positive for the virus.

The district’s original health and safety plan required students and staff identified as close contacts to quarantine for 10 to 14 days depending on symptoms.

Other school districts in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties are also reviewing their quarantine policies, Wagner said.

“They have said that keeping a healthy child at home is not beneficial when transmission rates in school are so low,” she said. Some of those districts are not requiring a quarantine of 10-14 days at home.

Wagner reported that 182 students identified as close contacts missed an average of five days of school from Sept. 1 through Nov 17. During the same period, 768 students missed school because they were quarantined because of covid-19 symptoms and missed an average of four days of school.

As of Dec. 6, there have been 115 positive cases of covid-19 since the beginning of the school year.

School Board President Pam Key said she personally felt that a child showing no symptoms should be allowed to be in school and not quarantine.

“We’re all about the education, and we look at educating our kids and look at how this is affecting their education,” she said.

Board Vice President Rick Kaczor noted that it’s harder for students to learn at home compared to last year, when the district offered live videos of classroom instruction.

“Students don’t have the live teacher in front of them to ask questions,” he said.

The district isn’t offering simultaneous live instruction in the classroom and on video this year because it was difficult for teachers to work with both groups of students at the same time, he said.

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