Correction: This story has been updated to correct the vote on this motion.

Eudora schools will temporarily suspend tracing of close contacts exposed to COVID-19 at school or extracurricular activities.

The School Board voted 4-0-2 during a special meeting Tuesday to approve the guidance from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

The Health Department sent out a memo Tuesday morning recommending a 30-day suspension of contact tracing for K-12 school districts that felt they were overwhelmed with the omicron surge.

The Health Department recommended districts that felt they could maintain their current contract tracing practices should continue to do so, according to the memo.

In an email to parents, Superintendent Stu Moeckel said contact tracing has become “unmanageable” due to the widespread transmission and exposure for those in public spaces.

School Board members Becky Plate and Claire Harding abstained on the motion to suspend contact tracing. Plate said she didn’t think there was enough discussion on how it would be implemented. The Eudora Times has reached out to Harding for comment. 

With the policy now moving forward to follow Health Department guidance and suspend contact tracing, Moeckel said they will switch to just testing students, teachers and staff who become symptomatic during the school day and request a test. The district will stop testing asymptomatic people.

The district will still follow the Douglas County mask mandate, Moeckel said.

The district will also still be following the county’s “test to stay” policy that says students and staff have to test negative before returning to school prior to 10 days of quarantine, Moeckel said. Moeckel said the county policy accepts both PCR and antigen tests as acceptable.

“There is no test needed to come back after 10 days,” Moeckel said. 

However, the district will try to get students and staff back in the classroom after five days of quarantine if they test negative by that point and have a negative test taken at school the morning of their return, Moeckel said. 

“Asking parents to regularly monitor their students and staff should help lift the burden off of schools,” Moeckel said. “I think our nurses are rockstars, but we’ve reached the point we can really no longer sustain tracing that.”

School district spokesperson Mark Dodge said the district currently has 183 students and 38 staff out due to COVID-19 as of 2 p.m. Tuesday. He said the district is not looking to close or move to remote learning anytime soon, as they cannot sustain remote learning for 40 hours per week.

“As of today, remote learning is not an option we can provide,” Dodge said.

Moeckel said the Health Department will review the recommendation to suspend contact tracing after 30 days and decide whether or not to continue with that guidance.

Reach reporter Alyssa Wingo at [email protected].