Update: Montgomery County’s Interim Superintendent Monifa McKnight announced changes to the county’s schools quarantine guidance at a county council meeting Tuesday.

Public school students who show possible coronavirus symptoms will receive a rapid COVID-19 test, due in part to the rollout of new testing made available through the Maryland State Department of Education. Those students and their close contacts who test positive will have to quarantine for 10 days. Last week, the guidance remained that all students in contact with a positive case — regardless of whether they showed symptoms — had to quarantine.

When councilmembers pressed McKnight on why rapid testing wasn’t in place on the first day of school, she pointed to the falling COVID rates earlier in the summer.

“We were in a very different place than we were the second week of August,” McKnight told councilmembers. “Transmission rates for COVID-19 were down in the county. We also were not navigating all the parts of the delta variant. And so, when the guidance on June 30 came out, we were just in a very different place then.”

School officials say they hope the rapid testing will be able to keep more students in school and not having to quarantine.

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Both Montgomery and Prince George’s counties public schools updated their vaccine mandates and COVID protocols for students and employees this week.

In Montgomery County, all school employees are required to get the COVID vaccine, eliminating the option for teachers and staff to test weekly instead. McKnight announced the vaccine mandate at an MCPS board meeting Thursday afternoon. By Oct. 29, all school employees must submit proof of full vaccination. In addition, student athletes 12 years and older participating in winter and spring sports will also have to get vaccinated. For the school district’s roughly 28,000 middle and high school athletes, details about whether students can get tested regularly instead of being vaccinated are still being worked out, Jeff Sullivan, the county’s schools athletic director, told Bethesda Magazine Thursday.

In Prince George’s County, all student athletes must also now submit proof of vaccination to participate in sports, or else submit to weekly testing starting Oct. 18. Monica Goldson, the CEO of Prince George’s County Public Schools made the announcement via a press release.

“This is another step forward in working to protect our 22,000 employees, nearly 132,000 students and their families, and all they encounter. We will continue to leverage every available safeguard for the PGCPS community,” Goldson said in the release.

In both counties, the only exception to the mandate for employees and athletes are those with medical conditions that prevent them from being vaccinated. Unvaccinated school employees in Montgomery County must provide proof of a medical condition and submit a negative test each week.

Around 75% of all MCPS employees have reported their vaccination status and about 96% of those who have reported are fully vaccinated, according to school officials. But about 6,000 school employees have not responded to MCPS’s request for information about their vaccination status, school officials reported Thursday. In the county, 87% of residents 12 years and older are fully vaccinated against the virus and 74% of the total population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jennifer Martin, the president of Montgomery County’s teachers union, told Bethesda Magazine that the union supports the new mandate.

“The vaccine is the best way to mitigate the severity of this disease and limit transmission,” Martin said. “We have a responsibility as educators to look out for students who don’t have the opportunity to get vaccinated, and a responsibility to keep one another safe.”

The vaccine mandate for student athletes and employees is intended to prevent the spread of the virus in schools. Since school started last week, more than 55 students in Montgomery County schools have tested positive for the virus and more than 1,700 have had to quarantine, according to school officials.

“While that number represents a larger number than we like, it still represented around 1% or less of all the students we were able to bring back,” McKnight said. “Students who are in quarantine…our first priority is that they continue to receive instruction.”

During Thursday’s board meeting, McKnight responded to the many comments from parents unhappy about the quarantine policy, which some parents say is excessive. McKnight told board members that her office is looking into how the district can better define who needs to quarantine. MCPS’s current guidance is that those who test positive for COVID must isolate for 10 days, regardless of vaccination status. Unvaccinated students–regardless of symptoms–exposed to someone with COVID are also asked to quarantine for 10 days and self-monitor. 

Those who are vaccinated are exempt from quarantining after exposure, but since students under 12 are not yet able to get vaccinated, many children would not have that exemption. While in quarantine, school officials say students have access to asynchronous learning materials and check-ins with a teacher. Currently, schools will only testing students who display COVID symptoms.

Next week, McNight says MCPS is working with Frederick-based CIAN Diagnostic to provide weekly testing to a random sampling of asymptomatic, Pre-K through 6th grade students whose parents have given consent. Starting on next week, Prince George’s County schools will also begin random testing of asymptomatic students regardless of vaccination status, testing 10% of the student population weekly. 

Meanwhile, PGCPS is offering hybrid and virtual learning options to students 12 years and under who may have to quarantine at home because they’re unable to get the vaccine, according to Goldson. Following PGCPS’s first day of school Wednesday, one individual at Bowie High School had already tested positive for the virus, according to a letter from the school’s principal on Thursday evening. Any individual who tests positive will not be allowed to return to school until they are cleared by a healthcare provider, the letter said.

At least 68.5% of people 12 years and older in Prince George’s county are fully vaccinated and slightly more than 58% of all county residents are vaccinated, according to CDC data. PGCPS is also offering vaccinations to students at various middle schools during school hours.