Frequently Asked Questions

Earlier this month, the Washington State Department of Health shared updates to COVID-19 health and safety guidance for schools. These safety measures are designed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.   

If you suspect your student has been exposed to COVID-19 or symptoms develop, it is recommended to seek out testing and inform your student’s school immediately if the test is positive. 

To reduce the spread of COVID-19, our district offers free COVID-19 testing for staff and students at school. Parent/guardian permission is required prior to administering a test at school. If you are testing your student or another family member at home, and have an outdated test on hand, the Department of Health also issued new specific guidance about which tests are OK to use. 

Testing is also available at Bellevue College, UW Medicine testing sites, and various other locations across King County. 

Testing site information is also available on our Immunizations and Testing webpage. 

Students and staff who test positive for COVID-19 are required to isolate at home for 5 days. If symptoms improve and the person who tested positive has had no fever for 24 hours without the use of fever-reducing medications, they can come back to school and are encouraged to test before returning.   

It is recommended that students and staff returning to school after isolation wear a well-fitted mask from days 6 to 10. Individuals returning to school from isolation should also remain masked for sports and other extracurricular activities.  

Students and staff who test positive after 5 days of isolation must stay at home for the full 10-day isolation period. 

Whenever a positive case of COVID-19 is reported within any of our facilities the district will follow guidance provided by Seattle and King County Public Health. Beginning Sept. 6, the district will resume publishing updates about positive cases on our COVID-19 dashboard (we did not report cases or updates during the summer). These cases will be updated every Monday afternoon. 

Schools will no longer send notifications about individual cases of COVID-19. We will inform students, families, and staff when there are outbreaks in school.

Masks are no longer universally required in schools as of March 12, 2022. Students and staff members who would like to continue to wear a mask may do so. The choices of everyone, whether unmasked or masked, will be respected. Masks will still be required: 

• When a student or staff member returns from isolation after a positive test -- see note below for details on returning after a positive case -- they must wear a mask in our schools and on our buses for days 6-10. (Day 1 is the first day of symptoms or, for those who have no symptoms, the day of the positive test result). If that student or staff member returns on Day 6, we are able to offer a rapid test upon return to school/work. If that test is negative, the person does not have to wear a mask for days 6-10.
• In our isolation rooms and health rooms. 

Health officials noted that masks may be universally required if there is a cluster and/or outbreak in a classroom or group of students such as a choir class or sports team. 

While only required in the situations described above, health officials recommend that staff and families consider having their students wear a mask on the bus, while singing, during high-risk indoor sports and other indoor activities with high aerosolization. 


Note: A person who tests positive may return to school/work after 5 full days of isolation: 

• If their symptoms have improved or they are asymptomatic AND IF 
• They have been fever-free for 24 hours without fever-reducing medications. 

Layered mitigation is the utilization of multiple mitigation strategies together. This proved to be the most effective way to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The layers, as required by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH), that we are utilizing as a District included vaccines, masks,* physical distancing, improved ventilation, handwashing and respiratory etiquette, cleaning and disinfecting, staying home when sick, testing, and contact tracing, in combination with quarantining.

*The indoor mask mandate was removed as of the end of the day on March 11, 2022. 

It is especially important this year to normalize students’ feelings. Our Positive Behavior and Social Emotional Support (PBSES) program in our schools focuses on the social and emotional needs of students, particularly the importance of explicitly teaching expected behaviors and positively reinforcing those behaviors. The district’s Teaching and Learning Department is working to identify essential learnings and build up students’ stamina for learning. We will continue to implement social and emotional lessons to support students will the skills necessary to have positive relationships with others, manage their stress, and develop resilience. 

The district is also using universal screening to identify K-12 students who may need additional support. At every school, we have counselors on site who have received training on school anxiety and cognitive behavioral skills training. We also have access to Swedish Hospital Social Workers if students need additional support or referrals to outside agencies.  

Parents can collaborate with the school in these efforts by explaining that other students and even adults may be feeling some anxiety as well. Observe your child’s behavior (you know them better than anyone else) and notify the school if you feel they need support.

We remain steadfast in our goal of keeping our schools open for in-person learning for all students, in accordance with direction from the ISD School Board, Governor of Washington State, Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Washington State Department of Health, Public Health -- Seattle & King County, Center for Disease Control and President of the United States. With that consideration, and based on feedback regarding in-person versus remote learning for the 2021-2022 school year, we chose to use our limited staff and financial resources to focus solely on in-person schooling. Operating in person with the addition of COVID-19 mitigation personnel takes additional resources. If we were to divert or divide those resources to offer multiple learning models, it could diminish our ability to offer the robust in-person experience that Issaquah students and families deserve and expect. It may also result in a less than adequate fully remote program. 

For remote learning options, we encourage families to look into one of the many OSPI-approved and accredited online programs. If families choose to enroll in an online program, but later decide they are comfortable sending their student back to the ISD for in-person learning, they are more than welcome to do so. Please contact your school’s registrar to re-enroll. 

The district also continues to offer a part-time Online Learning program for grades 7-12. Students can take 1-2 online learning courses each semester, with a maximum of 8 total online learning courses (4 credits) during their high school career. For more information on this model, please visit our Online Learning webpage.

Staff are excited to have students back in school buildings. To preserve learning time, any travel is recommended to be done outside of the days that school is in session. If you do plan to travel, King County has outlined travel recommendations.