New Mexico School Reopening Guidelines Echoed By CDC

Color-coded map showing counties in red, yellow or green with green (safest) to red (unsafe). Courtesy/NMDOH

NMPED News:

SANTA FE — The detailed, color-coded guidelines for safe school reopening that New Mexico adopted weeks ago are echoed now in long-awaited federal guidelines from the national Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC’s Indicators for Dynamic School Decision-Making, issued Sept. 15, are organized into a table that runs from green (safest) to red (unsafe). The colors are linked to community health factors including test positivity rate, new cases per capita and the ability of schools to implement mitigating strategies like mask-wearing and social distancing.

New Mexico initiated that very strategy weeks earlier, when the Public Education Department linked school reopening to the Department of Health’s color-coded map showing counties in red, yellow or green based on the same disease metrics.

“This indicates that not only are we on the right track, but we’re a model for the country,” PED Secretary Ryan Stewart said. “Education leaders around the country have been asking CDC for such guidance for months now. It’s reassuring that the strategy our top national health experts arrived at so closely mirrors what New Mexico has already implemented,” he said.

PED announced Sept. 3 that for any public school to reopen in the hybrid mode, the state as a whole had to be in the green — indicating it is meeting its so-called gating criteria. The state has remained in the green overall since that time.

Additionally, the county in which a district or charter is located also must be in the green; the district/charter must have a PED-approved plan demonstrating its instructional, social-emotional and family engagement processes are documented and established; and it must have safety and support plans in place, including any necessary upgrades to facilities and air filtration.

The CDC’s guidelines urge states to use the same indicators New Mexico requires: the number of new cases per 100,000 persons in the past 14 days; the percentage of positive tests in the last 14 days; and evidence that schools can successfully implement mitigation strategies.

K-12 education leaders and members of Congress have been pressing the CDC since spring for clear guidance on when schools can safely reopen. The federal agency’s Sept. 15 response came weeks after millions of children returned to schools, some in districts with positive rates above 20 percent and without requiring masks.

New Mexico’s progress in slowing the incidence and spread of COVID-19 has continued, with the statewide seven-day rolling average of daily cases at 90 as of Sept. 15, well below the gating criteria  target of 168. The statewide rate of spread, or r-effective, remains below 1, meaning the virus is spreading slower and not exponentially. Although the state’s COVID-19 hospitalizations remain significantly lower than earlier this summer, the southeast region made up the highest percentage of hospital admissions last week, according to the state Medical Advisory Team.

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