Please see answers to frequently asked questions below.
<< Return to Great Hearts Arizona Safe Return
Parents should screen their students each day for symptoms of contagious illness, including COVID-19. Please see our COVID-19 Home Screening criteria. As with any illness, students should not return to school until they are fever free (under 100 degrees) for 24 hours without the use of medication.
If you suspect that your child has COVID-19, please contact your health care professional. If your child tests positive, he or she may return to school 10 days after symptom onset (or 10 days after a positive test if asymptomatic) as long as symptoms have improved, and your child has been fever-free for 24 hours without the use of fever reducing medications. The same conditions apply to faculty and staff. Please see our Attendance Guidelines for illnesses, including COVID-19.
If a child tests positive for COVID-19, parents should contact the school nurse via email or phone. Additionally, all absences, including absences related to COVID-19, should be reported prior to the start of each school day.
Masks are optional for students and employees on campus per HB2898, which was passed by the Arizona Legislature and signed into law by Governor Ducey on June 30, 2021. The law bars public schools from requiring masks. Therefore, wearing masks at school is a decision left to families and employees. Great Hearts will respect the decision each family and employee make. In addition, Great Hearts faculty, staff and leadership will work to ensure no person is treated differently as a result of the choice to wear or not wear a mask. If any individual requests a mask at school, the school will provide one.
Social distancing will not be required, and is often not feasible given the number of students and the dimensions of the classrooms.
Great Hearts’ COVID-19 Response Teams, which played a key role in helping Great Hearts schools navigate the pandemic last year, will be in place again on every campus for the 2021-22 school year. These COVID Response Teams will closely monitor the data and trends at their specific campuses with the ability to implement a variety of measures if there is a significant rise in cases on a campus.
Children who are close contacts of a COVID-19 positive individual will be notified, but they will not be asked to quarantine unless they start to develop symptoms.
Your other children do not need to quarantine unless they develop symptoms. If they develop symptoms, they should stay home for 10 days from the date their symptoms began.
Parents/staff will be notified by email if someone in their child’s class tests positive. The number of positive COVID-19 cases will still be tracked on the COVID counter on the website, and staff will still conduct close contact interviews and notify those who were close contacts. Close contacts will not be required to quarantine unless they develop symptoms or spread begins to develop in a section or grade level.
The decision to remove desk shields is based on several factors. Unlike the proven benefit of air circulation and filtration, there is no evidence they are an effective mitigation strategy, nor are there formal recommendations to use them from external, health-related experts and organizations.
Great Hearts will continue to practice the daily, deep-cleaning protocols implemented on each campus last year. Current air filtration systems put in place at the beginning of 2020-21 school year will also continue, which have been shown to decrease respiratory-related illness infection rates. Efforts to ensure proper handwashing and respiratory hygiene will continue, providing both staff and students instruction at the beginning of the school year as well as providing hand washing opportunities and frequent use of hand sanitizer.
Yes. Great Hearts Nova is a tuition-free K-12 online school. Classes attended at Great Hearts Online are accredited by the State of Arizona. For more information, please go to www.greatheartsonline.org.
Students and employees who choose to wear a face-covering on campus can do so, and Great Hearts will continue to make face-coverings available to all visitors. Public schools in Texas are currently barred by law from requiring masks for students and teachers.
Great Hearts is required by law to comply with the new state law, effective June 30, 2021, that prohibits public schools from requiring masks for students and teachers. In addition, our data shows that during the two weeks that masks were optional at our schools last semester, we did not see an increase in cases.
Great Hearts is prohibited by a law that became effective on June 30, 2021 from requiring students and teachers to receive the COVID-19.
The vaccine is widely available at most local pharmacies, doctor’s offices and health clinics. The Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to include all individuals ages 12 and older. Currently, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is only available to individuals ages 18 and older. More information, including vaccination location, is available at https://www.vaccines.gov.
The current Safe Return policy is subject to change and Great Hearts staff is watching the status of each campus closely and also COVID trends in every county where there are Great Hearts schools.
