School Board sticks with hybrid schedule, 14-day quarantine

LACONIA — City schools will remain on a hybrid schedule for at least the next few weeks, the School Board has decided.

The board voted unanimously on Tuesday to continue with the arrangement where students alternate between days of in-class instruction and at-home assignments with teachers providing instructional assistance online.

The Laconia School District has been on a hybrid schedule since Nov. 23 because of increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, both statewide and locally. Since then some of the schools in the system have had to shift to full-remote instruction temporarily because staff members or students who tested positive for the virus had been found to have been in contact with a significant number of people in the school and who then had to quarantine.

Under the hybrid schedule there are only half as many students in a school building at any one time as would normally be the case.

Superintendent Steve Tucker said the school administration will continue to monitor the COVID-19 data and will update the board at its next meeting scheduled for Jan. 19.

The board also voted to keep in place the 14-day-quarantine requirement for people who test positive for COVID-19 or have been in close contact with someone who has.

Tucker told the board that state epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan recently advised the quarantine period can be reduced to 10 days based on the latest guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Those guidelines state a person’s quarantine can end after 10 days if the person has exhibited no COVID symptoms during the 10-day period.

All of the district’s school nurses, however, recommended staying with the two-week quarantine, Tucker said.

Board member Aaron Hayward said this was not a good time to relax precautions, given the greater number of COVID cases in recent months. He urged greater caution especially in light of a mutant variant of the novel coronavirus which has been reported in some parts of the U.S., though not in New England.