MICDS COVID-19 Resources

Masks and Face Coverings

• Students and employees will wear a mask while on campus when in a room with one or more other people.
• Recommendations on Types of Masks: 
  • Per CDC guidance, masks with valves or vents should not be used on campus since they allow exhaled air to be expelled out through holes in the material. This can allow exhaled respiratory droplets to reach others and potentially spread the COVID-19 virus.
  • In addition, bandanas and gaiters may also act similarly to masks with valves. Therefore, it is recommended that all community members wear cloth or surgical masks only.
• Answers to Common Questions about Masks
• Families and individuals are responsible for ensuring they have a clean mask each day.
• If a student or employee forgets or soils their face covering, the school nurses have a  limited extra supply of surgical facemasks in both child and adult sizes for as-needed use.
• Noncompliance and Opposition to Masks: The expectation is that all students wear a mask and divisions will have zero tolerance for the sharing/trading of masks, chewing on a mask, or wearing it in an inappropriate manner (e.g., on chin, nose exposed).

Social Distancing

• Furniture has been rearranged or removed to ensure at least three feet of social distancing wherever possible.
• Teachers are maintaining seating charts for accurate contact tracing when cases are identified on campus.

Hand Hygiene

• Age-appropriate signage is in place throughout all school buildings reminding students and employees of proper hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, masks, and social distancing.
• Additional hand sanitizer dispensers are regularly replenished throughout the campus.

Visitors on Campus

• In order to mitigate risk, the School is limiting visitors to campus. Only approved visitors are allowed and must self-screen before entering the academic areas any buildings. All parent drop-off and pick-up of students will occur outside.

Disinfection, Ionization, and Ventilation

• MICDS has invested in:
  • An antimicrobial barrier system which allows us to quickly clean, disinfect, and sanitize a lot of small classroom items like LEGOS, toys, and balls.
  • An air ionization system that significantly reduces the amount of airborne pathogens in all rooms.
  • Increased cleaning of all surfaces and disinfection is occurring throughout the school day.

We are asking all employees, students, and visitors to monitor themselves using the following questions before coming to campus each day. If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions, we ask that you or your child not attend school and that you contact the school nurse for appropriate follow-up:

• Has your child or any household contacts tested positive for COVID-19?
• Has your child or any household contacts displayed potential COVID-19 symptoms or been tested for COVID-19 and are awaiting results?
• Have you or your child been in contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days?
• Do you or your child have any of the following symptoms: stuffy/runny nose, nausea/vomiting/diarrhea, fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, chills, headache, or muscle aches?
• Have you or your child traveled internationally or to a territory with quarantine guidelines?

While we are not requiring at this time that all eligible MICDS students be vaccinated, at a minimum we need to know, on an aggregate basis, how many students have been fully vaccinated to date. This information helps us determine the extent to which additional COVID-19 transmission mitigation measures, such as masking and distancing, will be necessary to limit the disruptions to in-person learning that diagnosed cases in our community would precipitate.

If your children have been vaccinated against COVID-19, please upload their vaccination records as quickly as possible. The sooner we have this information, the better equipped we will be to make decisions about any necessary modifications to MICDS programs at the start of the school year, and the sooner we will be able to communicate these decisions to you and your children.

To inform our planning for the launch of the new school year, specifically as we seek to maximize in-person learning and socialization in keeping with the tenets of our MICDS Mission, we are requesting that parents and guardians upload COVID-19 vaccination records for their vaccinated children. This request accords with the recommendations in the Return to School Guidance published last week by the St. Louis County Department of Public Health. Please click here for instructions on how to update your child’s Magnus Health Portal with a photo of their COVID-19 vaccination card. If you have already uploaded COVID-19 vaccination documents in the past, please do so again to ensure the accuracy of our records as the new school year begins. Click here to log into the Parent Portal, navigate to the Magnus Health Portal, and upload your child’s card.

Vaccination records will be maintained in accordance with the same principles of individual privacy protection to which we adhere in our maintenance of other student health records. Students without COVID-19 vaccination documentation will be assumed to be unvaccinated. We will welcome the submission of vaccination records for younger students as soon as vaccines for children under the age of 12 have been approved for use.

If a student or employee tests positive for COVID-19, how will we be notified?

• If a student or employee tests positive for a COVID-19 infection, School officials will support the Department of Health’s efforts for contact tracing and enforce quarantining of those infected and their “close contacts.” Anyone identified as a close contact of the person who tests positive will be quarantined.
• St. Louis County Health Department is implementing a modified quarantine policy for the 2021-22 school year. Modified quarantine means that, if all pre-conditions are met, close contacts of positive cases are able to remain in school during their quarantine. Modified quarantine allows students to minimize disruption by continuing their classroom learning when it’s safe to do so. Studies have shown that when proper mitigation practices are in place (masking, physical distancing, hand hygiene), classroom settings have relatively low transmission rates compared with other settings.
  • Students in a modified quarantine must quarantine at home during their non-school hours.
  • Fully-immunized students and staff who are asymptomatic do not need to quarantine following exposure to COVID-19. Someone is considered “fully immunized” 14 days after their final vaccine dose (e.g., after the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or after the single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine).
  • These modified quarantine requirements apply for the school day only. Students who are contact traced cannot participate in after-school activities or athletics for 10 days per previous quarantine guidelines.
• If your child is determined to be in close contact with a person who tests positive, we will notify you via an email and/or phone call from Health Services or the Athletics Department along with instructions regarding applicable quarantine requirements according to the Department of Public Health. Providing proof of COVID-19 vaccination in advance will assist contact tracing efforts greatly.
• Due to legal reasons, the School is unable to provide names of those who test positive for COVID-19.

When assessing potential exposures on campus, the school nurses will work in conjunction with the Department of Health to consider multiple factors for each situation during their contact tracing. Our Health Services team will work within current CDC and St. Louis County Department of Public Health guidelines and take an abundance of caution approach when determining quarantine decisions.

St. Louis County Department of Health (DPH) has provided this additional information for families that explains school isolation and quarantine requirements as of 8/25/21.

• Families play a vital role in maintaining safety on campus. The number one safety measure is to keep a child home if they are sick. We also encourage all MICDS families to keep family members up to date on well visits and get a COVID-19 vaccination and an annual flu shot, if possible. Please see the Washington University School of Medicine’s Student Symptom Decision Tree for further guidance on when your child or you should stay home and/or seek medical assistance when not feeling well.

• Now more than ever, it is imperative that we partner together for the health and safety of our community, which includes cooperation and collaboration regarding accurate reporting of symptoms, keeping children home when they are ill, and abiding by all quarantine guidelines. Please communicate with Health Services if your child or a member of your household becomes ill and/or diagnosed with COVID-19 or if your child has been exposed to someone known to have COVID-19. Having this information will help us provide a safe environment for our students, faculty, and staff.

• We want to work with families to support their child’s adherence to safety measures while they are on campus as well as at home. We understand that there are families with higher risk members in their households. As a community that prioritizes health and safety, we must all do our part to adhere to state and local health recommendations and regulations to control transmission and potential future outbreaks. Moreover, there may be times when we ask families to comply with broader safety measures and we greatly appreciate your cooperation in this regard.

• We are asking all employees, students, and visitors to monitor themselves using the following questions before coming to campus each day. If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions, we ask that you or your child not attend school and that you contact the school nurse for appropriate follow-up:  

• • Has your child or any household contacts tested positive for COVID-19?
  • Has your child or any household contacts displayed potential COVID-19 symptoms or been tested for COVID-19 and are awaiting results?

• • Have you or your child been in contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 10 days?

• • Do you or your child have any of the following symptoms: fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, chills, headache, or muscle aches?
  • Have you or your child traveled internationally or to a territory with quarantine guidelines?

Our Health Services team is happy to work with families to determine appropriate actions upon the return home from travel. MICDS follows CDC travel guidelines. Please visit these links to review current guidelines that pertain to your travel plans:

Domestic Travel During COVID-19

International Travel During COVID-19

• MICDS is pleased to now offer VOLUNTARY and FREE rapid antigen testing for symptomatic employees and students via a federal government program accessed through the Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). Our hope is that offering the testing on campus will provide quicker answers regarding symptoms and the need to isolate, quarantine, or just monitor symptoms. It not only will help the individual, family, and School determine potential return to school dates more quickly but also provide individuals and families with knowledge and results they can share with their primary care providers for appropriate follow-up. The Abbott BinaxNow rapid antigen test is a voluntary, minimally invasive anterior nasal swab test that can be used only for testing symptomatic individuals within seven days of symptom onset. The test will be administered by one of our school nurses and yields results in just 15 minutes without any additional equipment. Both of our nurses completed the required training to administer the BinaxNOW tests at MICDS and will report all results to the St. Louis County Department of Health as required.In order to access a voluntary BinaxNOW test at MICDS, please reach out to Michelle Fox or Stephanie Presson. They will determine when an individual’s symptoms would warrant potential testing or not and partner with each individual and/or family.
• For PCR testing, our Health Services Team recommends contacting your primary care physician to explore the best and quickest option. 
• In addition, the following are community resources offering testing as well:
  • Testing appointment page for the St. Louis County Department of Health
  • Biovision Diagnostics
  • BJC Screening and Testing
  • Mercy Go Health Urgent Care 
  • SSM Testing
  • St. Luke’s Testing 
  • Total Access Urgent Care

Please note: for symptomatic students or employees, Health Services cannot accept positive or negative results from a home COVID-19 test for documentation and contact tracing purposes.

• St. Louis County Coronavirus Information Center 
• Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• U.S. Department of State Travel information 
• John Hopkins University COVID Dashboard 
• International SOS COVID information

• Cases – Anyone who has tested positive, whether or not they have any symptoms.
• Close contact – Anyone who through contact tracing was found to be within 3 feet for at least 15 minutes in a 24-hour time frame, starting two days before symptoms first appeared or date of the test (whichever is earlier). Exposure level and setting will be considered when making a determination of close contacts.
• Contact of a contact – Anyone who has had direct contact with a “close contact” as defined above. A “contact of a contact” does not have to quarantine or stay away from campus unless the contact to whom they have been exposed develops symptoms, at which point they would be determined a possible “close contact.” 
• Isolation – The separation of people with an infectious disease, like COVID-19, from people who are not sick.
• Quarantine – Separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.
• Modified Quarantine – St. Louis County Health Department is implementing a modified quarantine policy for the 2021-22 school year. Modified quarantine means that, if all pre-conditions are met, close contacts of positive cases are able to remain in school during their quarantine. Modified quarantine allows students to minimize disruption by continuing their classroom learning when it’s safe to do so. Studies have shown that when proper mitigation practices are in place (masking, physical distancing, hand hygiene), classroom settings have relatively low transmission rates compared with other settings. Students in a modified quarantine must quarantine at home during their non-school hours.