On the second day of high school in Texas, Natosha Daniels’ 14-year-old daughter went all day without eating because she did not want to remove her mask.The teen’s school has a couple of thousand students, and the cafeteria was crowded. Plus Round Rock Independent School District outside Austin didn’t require masks, so some students weren’t wearing them. Even her honors biology teacher was maskless.
Daniels said her daughter, who like her is fully vaccinated, is terrified of bringing home the virus because it could infect her 7-year-old sibling, who is too young for a shot.
“She was like, ‘Mama I’m going to pass out,’” said Daniels, a Round Rock Black Parents Association member and former assistant principal in the district.
“Every morning I wake up with knots in my chest, just like, ‘Am I making the right decision, putting myself and my child at risk for my older two to go to school?’” said Daniels, who is immunocompromised. “And my husband was like, ‘Well the option still stands for you to go get an Airbnb and move out’ with my youngest. … Do we sacrifice our savings? It’s so hard.”
After a difficult year or more of virtual learning, parents are eager to have their children back in classrooms. But even as the highly transmissible delta variant surges, school districts like Daniels’ aren’t beefing up protocols to prevent infections. Masks aren’t mandated or enforced, according to teachers, parents and officials in several states. Physical distancing is nearly impossible. To top it off, students exposed to covid may not be required to quarantine despite guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, risking an even more rapid spread among children, the youngest of whom aren’t yet eligible for vaccination.
The CDC advises quarantining up to 14 days for people who have had close contact with an infected person — within 6 feet for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period. (It exempts vaccinated people without symptoms.) This summer, the agency drafted an exception for schools: It’s not considered close contact if both the infected and exposed students “correctly and consistently” wore masks. That means an unvaccinated but masked student who was exposed wouldn’t have to quarantine.
But whether school districts follow CDC guidelines is an open question. And, in many cases, counties, states and the CDC don’t issue the same advice.
Even if districts follow CDC guidance, success hinges on whether students consistently wear masks. In Round Rock, for example, quarantine is “strongly” recommended for students and staff members who had close contact with those infected, essentially leaving it up to parents whether to take a child out of school.
“An optional quarantine just doesn’t work,” said Allison Stewart, lead epidemiologist at Williamson County and Cities Health District, which oversees 12 school districts including most Round Rock schools. When not required, “it seems that there’s only a cursory effort to actually identify contacts.” And then only “a cursory effort to quarantine.”