Fountain Hills High School is closed for 14 days after being alerted last week that several students had tested positive for COVID-19. The announcement was made the morning of Oct. 28, with in-person classes not planned to return until Nov. 12.

Along with the closure of campus, all FHHS extracurricular activities, including athletics, are cancelled until Nov. 11. Students at other local schools with siblings attending FHHS are also being asked to stay home.

While it is difficult to determine how COVID-19 was introduced to the FHHS student body, administrators determined that quarantined students from two other Valley schools were at the Oct. 23 home football game.

Along with that potential exposure at the football game, a letter sent home to all District parents noted some students were potentially exposed to COVID-19 by members of their family or while out in the community.

In that letter, Superintendent Kelly Glass urged students to quarantine for 14 days.

“Individuals exposed through close contact must quarantine for 14 days from the last exposure in order to prevent illness in new persons,” Glass said. “Quarantine means the student should not go to work, hang out with friends, go to social events, or come into close contact with another person, even if they have no symptoms, until the 14-day period of isolation has passed.”

Glass also asked parents to monitor their children for any symptoms of COVID-19 like fever, chills, cough, headaches or body aches and new loss of taste and smell.

Glass ended her letter by stating it is the district’s goal to get back to in-person learning, but that they will follow the guidance of public health officials.

“We continue to communicate frequently with the Maricopa County Department of Public Health staff to guide us in contact tracing and mitigation protocols,” Glass said. “Our goal is to continue to provide in-person learning at our schools unless the MCDPH would feel it is prudent to move a class to distance learning or, in the case of a severe outbreak, to close a school temporarily and move to distance learning.”

Guidelines

This past week it became apparent that the Arizona Department of Health Services has changed its school reopening recommendations regarding COVID-19.

The ADHS uses three community benchmarks when it comes to determining if in-person instruction is safe including COVID cases, percent positivity and COVID-like illness.

When the ADHS originally released its “Safely return to in-person instruction” document, it stated that a school should look at switching to virtual learning “when one or more of the benchmarks are in the substantial spread category.”

Now, however, ADHS has changed that document to say a school should consider switching to virtual learning when all three benchmarks are in the substantial spread category.

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey stated at an Oct. 29 press conference that the change was at the request of public education leaders, but State Superintendent Kathy Hoffman denied that the Arizona Department of Education made the request.

The Arizona School Boards Association also released a statement saying that they were not involved in discussions about this change.