TIVERTON — Two students were sent home Tuesday — one from the middle school and one from Ranger Elementary School — after having symptoms associated with COVID-19, while two sent home Monday on the first day of school from the middle school and Pocasset School have tested negative.
Superintendent Peter Sanchioni said he expects this will be a daily occurrence for not only Tiverton, but all districts in the state who follow the guidelines set by the state Department of Health that requires COVID-19 tests to be done if possible symptoms are exhibited by a child or adult in a school building.
“We expected this,” Sanchioni said Tuesday morning, adding it will become “business as usual. We’re going to have probable cases everyday, but it doesn’t mean they’re COVID.”
“We follow the Rhode Island Department of Health playbook,” Sanchioni said of sending a student home and requiring a COVID-19 test if they have a cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, loss of taste or loss of smell.
If a student or staff member have two of the following symptoms — fever, chills, muscle or body aches, headache, sore throat, fatigue, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea — they will be sent home and required to be tested for COVID-19. The Department of Health refers to such occurances as “probably cases,” according to its playbook.
“Kids come to school all the time with a runny nose or headache or cough,” said Sanchioni, but “we’re in a different world now,” he said of those symptoms now being cause for sending them home and to the state’s rapid COVID-19 testing sites that have been set up for students and staff in schools.
Unlike the past, when children regularly went to school with sniffles or a cough, parents are being asked to keep their child home if they exhibit any symptoms.
Parents are asked to fill out a form online every morning before sending their child to school attesting to their wellness.
Sanchioni said a parent knows their child better than anyone, but they should not send them to school if they have any symptoms. “We’re going to send them home,” he said of the new guidelines.
Parents of students at the schools where students have been sent home have been sent letters notifying them of the possible COVID cases. Sanchioni said they want to be as transparent as possible so they can get the facts out and not have people learn about it on social media or at the soccer field.