Schools

<< back to news listing

Notifications for COVID-19 cases

Wed, 6 Oct, 2021

The Government of Alberta has introduced new health measures for schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

WHAT WE CONSIDER WHEN CLASSES SHIFT ONLINE

Under these new measures, if three or more COVID-19 cases are identified within five days in a Kindergarten to Grade 6 class, that class will shift to online learning for 10 days. Your school will notify you if your child needs to shift online.

As a Division, we will also continue to closely monitor attendance in schools. We have the flexibility to shift students online as a measure to keep our school communities safe.

Further measures include:

• contact notification—starting next week, Alberta Health Services will share information about positive cases of COVID-19 with the Division, and the Division will continue to communicate with families when we know about a positive case.
• at-home rapid test kits—the province will provide rapid test kits to K–6 schools that are on outbreak status so they can distribute kits to families. Rapid testing will be voluntary.
• publicly reporting COVID-19 cases in schools on alberta.ca—the province will list schools across Alberta that have two or more cases.
• clarifying the definition of an outbreak—the province will now report schools as an outbreak when they have 10 or more COVID-19 cases that were infectious while at school within 14 days.

COMMITMENT TO SAFETY

These new measures support our ongoing efforts to keep school communities safe. We ask families and staff to continue letting us know if they test positive for COVID-19. This allows us to notify families when a case has been reported in their child’s class or school. Our Division has also announced we are requiring employees to be fully vaccinated. 

We will continue to keep families informed by sharing information about COVID-19 cases in schools.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information, read a letter from Superintendent Darrel Robertson.