By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Savannah School District is making some changed to its COVID response plan in the upcoming spring semester.
School District Spokesperson Jess Gillett says the school has been participating in the test to stay program, where a student has to test negative three times, but can still stay on campus so long as they test negative.
Gillett says though that while most of the protocols will stay the same, the biggest change will come in how students can test.
"What we are doing starting second semester, is rather than those students being excluded from school, we are encouraging them to participate in free testing that we have on campus," Gillett tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "We still encourage them to wear a mask, especially when we know that they have been exposed."
Gillett says the school has been participating in the test to stay program, and the results the district has seen have been positive.
"What we were finding is that a lot of the people who were participating in that were not coming back positive, even though they were exposed at school," Gillett says. "So we felt pretty confident moving forward with this new plan."
And Gillett says that district wide, Savannah is on the right side of things when it comes to COVID.
"We really are in a good place district wide with where we are with COVID," Gillett says.
Gillett says that all year the district has been evaluating its procedures, and they will continue to do so through the next semester.
"If we hit a place where there still is a lot of illness, and there are some COVID concerns, then as kind of has been the theme since COVID started, if we need to pivot and make some changes, we will absolutely do that," Gillett explains.
The new response plan will go into effect when Savannah students return to school on January 4th. You can find out more information HERE.