The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Principal Alison Haney told Sisters Middle School families that they must keep 8th graders home on Thursday, May 13, due to exposure to COVID-19.

“All 8th graders are asked to stay home and log-in to Canvas to follow a virtual schedule for the day. We are taking a pause day for 8th grade due to further direct exposures and COVID positives," Haney wrote in an email to families.

“The Oregon Health Authority is now requiring a 14-day quarantine for all unvaccinated contacts in all settings, including schools.

A 14-day quarantine is the lowest risk approach and helps reduce spread from asymptomatic people, which we know is a significant contributor in this pandemic.

This change took place on April 29, when OHA updated the investigative guidelines and the quarantine guidelines to make 14 day quarantine mandatory.

This means that when students are quarantined from a sports team they are also quarantined from school, or vice versa, if a student is quarantined from school they are also quarantined from extracurriculuars.

This must be taken seriously as we are seeing a direct correlation with positive cases, direct exposures and not yielding quarantine guidelines.”

At the end of April, multiple cases in the low single digits affecting both Sisters High School and Sisters Middle School led to a 14-day quarantine of 24 students at Sisters High School and the entire sixth grade at Sisters Middle School.