[ January 07, 2022 ] Pickens County School District adjusts quarantine practices based on the latest DPH guidance. Below is a letter to families:

Dear Pickens County School District Family,

Throughout the pandemic, our district has made every effort to follow governor and DPH guidance as much as possible. We understand the hardship this has placed on families in the county as many have endured multiple quarantines of a child due to contact tracing. Yesterday, January 6th, the governor and DPH acknowledged this hardship and loss of instructional time with revised guidance effective immediately.

This new guidance has the goal of facilitating in-person learning by allowing those students that would have been quarantined due to contact tracing to remain in school so long as the exposure occurred in the school setting and the student is asymptomatic (showing no symptoms). We will be adopting this new guidance effective Monday, January 10, 2022.

We will shift our focus away from contact tracing and quarantine to monitoring children for signs of illness. Moving forward, we will be sending out letters notifying you that your child was in class, on the bus, participated in a sport, etc. with a positive case just as we do with any other communicable disease. We are asking that parents assist us in this endeavor by carefully monitoring your child each morning before sending them to school and not sending them if they exhibit any signs of illness at all. Pickens County Schools will strongly encourage students receiving notice of having been in a setting with a positive individual wear a mask for 10 days after notification.

We also encourage parents to continue to take advantage of our onsite medical staff provided through Pickens Primary Care to have your child tested if they exhibit any signs of sickness and to notify the school or the PCSD COVID hotline when your child tests positive for COVID. We will continue to notify DPH when a notifiable disease is reported and alert DPH of concerns with clusters and outbreaks which may require immediate public health intervention.

Any student that is currently in quarantine and is asymptomatic (showing no symptoms) will return to school on Monday, January 10, 2022, and may begin to participate in extra-curricular activities immediately.

While the constant change in guidance has been frustrating at times, we want to thank the families of Pickens County for their support throughout this pandemic. We hope that with the help of our parents, we can even more effectively monitor students for symptoms while also meeting the new DPH standard of keeping healthy students in class.

If you are the parent of a medically fragile student and have concerns, please contact our Director of Health Services, Ms. Gail Smith at (706) 299-2946. Thank you for your support during this challenging time.