Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi gave a community update to the Alameda school community Friday, Jan. 14. Majority of the discussion touched on COVID-19 updates.

He reiterated that AUSD remains committed to keeping schools open. He said district-wide closures are an “outmoded response” that are harmful to many aspects of students’ health and well-being. Another part of his reasoning is evidence that shows there are low hospitalizations among children for the new coronavirus strain. Scuderi said the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) is seeing low levels of severe disease and hospitalizations among children from the omicron variant.

However, the school district is remaining cautious.

“Despite that, we remain vigilant in our attempts to reduce transmission on our campuses,” wrote Scuderi. “The number of our COVID-19 cases continues to rise; current count is on our COVID-19 Dashboard. Those cases, however, remain a very small fraction of our total schools’ populations.”

Scuderi said the district’s COVID-19 team is studying the new ACPHD and protocols regarding the amount of time for people with COVID to quarantine. ACPHD shortened the period for modified quarantine from seven days to five days.

“Our continued analysis of how best to respond to positive cases at the secondary level include continuing to offer weekly testing for all middle and high school students; providing higher-quality masks to secondary students; encouraging students to get vaccinated (including the booster); and developing stream-lined notifications for exposed students,” wrote the superintendent. “Masking, daily screening for symptoms, avoiding large gatherings, and staying home when sick remain key to reducing COVID-19 transmission on our campuses.”

Scuderi said it is important that children are tested only once per week at AUSD sites. This way allows the district to test as many people as possible. “Testing supplies and bandwidth are stretched to maximum capacity now,” Scuderi wrote. The requirement is not just for AUSD, but for their testing partner, National Labs.

Scuderi also showed his appreciation to the dedication and commitment AUSD staff are showing under “tremendous strain,” including the way teachers are covering other teachers’ classes when they are ill. Lastly, Scuderi ended the presentation by taking a moment to remember the contributions to the world by Martin Luther King, Jr.