Kaiser’s new COVID policy no one knows about
An illustration created by the CDC showing the “ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses”
November 4, 2022
Kaiser High School allows students positive with COVID-19 to come to school, so long as they aren’t showing symptoms and wear a mask.
The COVID policy was first implemented by The Hawaii Department of Education (HIDOE) in January 2022, and can be found on the Kaiser Website homepage, in the KHS COVID-19 section. The gist of the protocol is that students who test positive with COVID-19 must “Isolate” for 5 days, if the symptoms don’t improve, that student will have to isolate for another 5 days. The student must be without fever or symptoms of fever for 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medications. Lastly, the student must wear a “well-fitting” mask to school.
HIDOE’s policy never explicitly states that students can come to school positive with COVID-19, but at the same time, it has never mentioned students requiring a negative COVID test to come to school. The policy is focused on symptoms, not COVID test results.
As of July 27th, 2022, new HIDOE COVID guidelines for the 22-23 school year were introduced via Kaiser’s eNotes program. These guidelines state students can come to school positive with COVID-19, following the same protocol as before. This updated version contains more information on everything COVID related. How to properly disinfect, guidelines for social gatherings, and more. It contains important information for those who would like to know more about what guidelines and protocols to follow.
The new guidelines are more lax, and allow individuals to do more than they were allowed to before. It’s representative of how Kaiser High has changed over the course of the pandemic. During 2020, the entire school was online. Now, during 2022, students and teachers aren’t required to wear masks on campus.
The reason most people didn’t know that students could come to school positive with COVID is because the information isn’t properly presented. The guidelines from July 2022 are not in the KHS COVID-19 section on the school website, it is found in the Recent News section. It’s not even the main subject of the eNotes, and isn’t labeled as important information.
There’s important information for the Kaiser community to know, and yet it isn’t easy to access.
How do the new guidelines make you feel? Should students be allowed to come to school positive with COVID-19?
