Several Oswego School District 308 principals quarantining after possible COVID-19 exposure

Oswego School District 308 officials have confirmed that several of the district's elementary school principals are quarantining for two weeks after potentially being exposed to COVID-19 during a meeting last week.

Director of Communications and Public Relations Theresa Komitas described the quarantine as a precautionary move by the district.

The positive COVID-19 diagnosis for the individual who attended the Oct. 13 meeting came several days after the meeting, Komitas said.

"It is an exposure precaution," Komitas explained. "There was an encounter between a number of them because they are all colleagues...it's all a precautionary quarantine at this point.

"Our approach is that we will never take chances, so even if there's a gray area where someone may have been exposed, we definitely take the more conservative approach of putting them out. We're just being very, very precautionary, and I think that's an important piece of this message, for everyone to know."

According to the district's reopening plan, staff members or students who are diagnosed with COVID-19 must stay home for a minimum of 10 days from the onset of symptoms, or from receiving a positive COVID-19 test result.

An employee who tests positive cannot return to a building until they are fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of fever-reducing medication and the improvement of other symptoms, or if they provide documentation of a negative COVID-19 PCR test and symptoms have improved and they are fever-free for at least 24 hours without fever-reducing medication. The third option for an employee to return to a district building is to provide an alternative diagnosis for the specified symptom, list of symptoms and expected duration from a physician that includes a release to attend work, along with a negative COVID test - if deemed appropriate by the physician.

The extra precautions are what sets the district's plan apart, Komitas said.

"We're not going to take any chances, and that's the benefit of our system being set up the way that it is, with kids having their same instructor that they had for remote for all, the same instructor when they're in person and teaching them live from the classroom so that if they need to come on or off of in-person and into remote and back, there's continuity between the learning programs," she said.

"We are definitely erring on the side of caution any time there was a potential for an exposure, or a potential that somebody is ill. While we're waiting to find out, we take no chances."

Because the principals were exposed during the middle of the week of Oct. 13, they have been working remotely during their quarantine period, and will return to their school buildings during the week of Oct. 26, Komitas said.

The district's hybrid learning plan can be found on its website. Currently students in isolated programs have returned to the classroom, with elementary and early childhood students set to return Nov. 9, and junior high and high school students set to return Jan. 11.