By Lindsay Mosberg
On January 13th 2022, the Irvington administration announced that students and teachers who test positive will be “required to isolate 5 days (regardless of vaccination status.) Day 0 is the first day of symptoms or, for asymptomatic students, the day the COVID19 test was performed.”
It is important that safety for students and faculty comes first, however with this in mind the shorter Covid-19 quarantine guidelines can be a good thing for both students and teachers. When students are out of school they miss a lot of information that is being taught in the classroom. Whether they miss completing physical labs or encounter technical difficulties on a computer, school via zoom is not the same type of education that a student would get in person.
The new guidelines allow students to miss a lot less school. Thus, students come back earlier and do not have to do too much work. Additionally, when students are online it can be difficult to ask a teacher questions or reach out for help, so a student can fall behind a lot each and every day that they do not attend school in person.
With the rise of more positive Covid-19 cases due to the new variants, exposure to a positive person can lead to a lot more people being out sick including teachers. When teachers are out sick, they may not be able to meet over the google meet and thus a substitute teacher is in charge of covering material that they do not know as well as the teacher. Thus, with the old Covid guidelines, students are left with a sub and ten days worth of work that they do not understand. The new five day requirement enables teachers who feel better to come back earlier and resume in person teaching, allowing students to get back to normal and communicate their understanding of the material with their teachers.
The shorter Covid quarantine guideline is a very positive result for the community. If everyone follows the rules and comes in after the fifth day of isolation, they will be able to quickly pick up where they left off.
