Rutherford County Schools is telling 1,250 students it’s OK to come back to school, after initially requiring them to quarantine for exposure to possible COVID-19 cases.
The Tennessee Department of Health has updated its guidance to schools statewide. Now, rather than having students to stay home if they come in contact with someone with a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19, they only have to self-isolate because of contact with confirmed cases.
“We know that many parents have expressed frustration over the past few days because their children have been quarantined and moved to distance learning for a 14-day period,” RCS spokesman James Evans says in a statement. “We are grateful for this new guidance from the Health Department.”
The district plans to work with families to bring students back to their schools.
Since the start of the school year, Rutherford already has two schools — Christiana Middle and Smyrna Elementary — that have closed because of how many students had to quarantine.
The district, which has 47,000 students, says if a student is isolated with potential symptoms, the rest of the students in that class will be moved to another area for the remainder of the day so the classroom can be sanitized. The school system also says parents will still be notified of “any issues that affect their children directly.”
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified Smyrna Elementary as a middle school.
WPLN News is compiling known exposures and outbreaks at Tennessee schools. To contribute, share what you’ve learned — including emails from district administrators — by emailing [email protected].
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