Cherokee County Back-To-School 2021: Masks, Vaccines, First Day

CHEROKEE COUNTY, GA — The first day of school starts on Aug. 2 in Cherokee County. District officials released guidelines, including for masks, vaccines and more.

In a letter to the community, Cherokee Schools Superintendent Brian Hightower said that the district is returning to pre-pandemic school operations, due to Gov. Brian Kemp ending the Public Health State of Emergency.

"While we're excited about bringing back so many aspects of school put on hold for the past year and a half, from field trips to assemblies to classroom volunteers, we also know that COVID-19 may force changes to our operations," Hightower said in a newsletter. "We encourage and recommend getting the COVID-19 vaccine. As we did last year, we will continuously monitor caseloads in our community and schools (every Friday, we will post online the totals of active cases among students and staff), take appropriate action and keep you informed."

Masks

Staff and students are not required to wear masks in Cherokee County schools or offices at any time, but can choose to wear them. The district will continue to provide disposable masks to individuals who might request them.

Vaccinations

COVID-19 vaccinations are not required for employees or students, but are encouraged and recommended. The Cherokee County Health Department and many local healthcare providers have COVID-19 vaccines readily available; there are no plans to host COVID-19 vaccination events at schools or offices.

Quarantines

Cherokee County will not issue mandated precautionary quarantines to students or staff for close contact at school with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. When principals are informed of a positive case among students or staff, they will notify any affected staff and email a notification to the parents of students in the affected classes notifying them of the positive case and the important need to monitor for symptoms, but no precautionary quarantines will be required. This is the same state-mandated practice the district follows for other serious communicable diseases.

Students or staff who test positive for COVID-19 will continue to follow Department of Public Health guidelines, which require you to stay home for 10 days since symptoms first appeared and be fever-free, without use of fever-reducing medications, for 24 hours before returning to school.

Other COVID-19 precautions

Schools will hold open house/walk through events the last week of July; the schedule is posted online. School supply lists also have been posted for all schools on the district's website.

Schools will return to their normal operating procedures for lunchtime and class bell schedules; and, assemblies and field trips will resume. Special events open to parents and families will resume, and parent volunteers will be permitted to work throughout the school, including in classrooms.

The district will continue to invest in increased cleaning and sanitizing at all school locations and will continue to provide surface and hand sanitizer spray to classrooms. These measures, coupled with the significant investment last school year to upgrade ventilation filters and to replace water fountains with water bottle filling stations, appear to have made an improvement in overall student and staff health.

Other first day resources can be found on the district's website.