In an Aug. 11 broadcast memo to school administrators, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) said it understands that there will be instances where individual students, groups of students, or entire classes will meet the New Jersey Department of Health’s (NJDOH) COVID-19 exclusion criteria and must be quarantined from school due to the pandemic.
While state law permits virtual or remote instruction to satisfy the 180-day teaching requirement, the law does not explicitly address situations when individual students, groups of students, or entire classes are excluded from school while the rest of the district or school remains open for in-person instruction.
The NJDOE issued the following guidance to address the situation:
“Where an individual student, group of students, or entire class(es) are excluded from school due to meeting the NJDOH’s COVID-19 exclusion criteria, LEAs are strongly encouraged to immediately provide virtual or remote instruction to those students in a manner commensurate with in-person instruction. Over the last seventeen months, LEAs have employed immense creativity and innovation in delivering high-quality education to students in their homes. It is the Department’s expectation that LEAs will continue to employ such strategies to ensure that students are able to continue their educational progress even when excluded from school due to COVID-19,” the NJDOE broadcast memo said.
Districts must continue to account for attendance of quarantined students in accordance with their local attendance policies, the memo said.
See the entire memo here.