US quarantine requirements may delay return to in-person school

Shannon Silver had planned to take her family on a trip from her home in Connecticut to visit relatives in Ohio just before the start of the school year for her two children.

But she and her husband reversed course when people travelling from Ohio were added to a list of those who must quarantine for 14 days upon entering Connecticut.

That requirement might have meant her 10-year-old son would miss the first day of sixth grade at St Matthew School in Bristol.

“We weren’t going to do that, especially at the beginning of the school year,” Silver said. “Plus, he really didn’t want to miss the last two weeks of summer by having to quarantine.”

The family instead went to see other relatives in Colorado, which wasn’t on the list.

As states around the country require visitors from areas with high rates of coronavirus infections to quarantine upon arrival, children taking end-of-summer vacations to hot spots are facing the possibility of being forced to skip the start of in-person learning at their schools.

More than a dozen states have such travel advisories, including many in the Northeast along with Alaska, Kentucky and Ohio.

More than 30 states are on the list issued by Connecticut, New York and New Jersey in an attempt to prevent another surge of COVID-19 in the region, which was among the hardest hit early in the pandemic.

As schools in the Northeast prepare to open early next month, officials are urging parents to be mindful of that guidance while planning any Labour Day getaways.

Both New York and New Jersey also are holding out hope for many school districts to offer in-person learning this fall, although Murphy recently authorised the state’s more than 600 school districts to implement virtual options.

New Jersey’s school reopening plan doesn’t directly address students who are in quarantine when the year begins.

Some school districts, like Willingboro, have reminded families to quarantine if they’re returning from states listed on the advisory. Others, like the state’s largest in Newark, don’t directly mention the advisory in their return-to-school plans.

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