Northern Lehigh School District plans to join other neighboring school districts in ending contact tracing.

District Superintendent Matthew J. Link shared information and a recommendation on the district’s COVID health and safety plan at Monday’s school board meeting.

Link said that on the week of Jan. 10, about two weeks after returning from winter break, the district saw its biggest spike in positive cases for both students and faculty, or all employees, since the week of Sept. 13.

After that, Link said cases remained relatively low for students, and very low for employees.

Link said that in the past three weeks, the district has only had two cases for employees, and has been averaging about seven cases for students over the past three weeks.

“The numbers are going down; I think that mirrors a trend that we’re seeing locally,” Link said. “I checked Lehigh County and Northampton County’s report last week, and they’re almost down by half in the number of positive cases and the percentage of people testing positive.”

Link said they double-checked with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and then gave his recommendation that the district end contact tracing.

“What I would like to recommend to the board this evening is that we end contact tracing in a way that we are no longer sending out notifications to parents if their child may be in close contact with a student that has tested positive,” he said. “I would like to recommend that we end contact tracing; the Department of Health said that we are able to do so, and I know that a number of other local school districts around Lehigh County and Northampton County are no longer notifying parents or guardians if their child may be in close contact.”

Board President Mathias Green asked the board if it would like to have a motion and a second to allow Link to do that, or if it’s comfortable that the authorization that it has given him is sufficient to allow him to participate.

Director Gary Fedorcha said he believes that the board has given that recognition to Link, and he would like to see that continue.

Director Robert Keegan Jr. asked what happens if you’re a mom of a kindergarten kid and all of a sudden they say, “you’re not going to call me when my child’s been in close contact with someone in school.”

“And I know it’s happening across the commonwealth,” Keegan said. “What’s the answer going to be?”

Link answered based on what’s in the district’s health and safety plan.

“If your son or daughter shows symptoms, they should stay home,” he said. “That’s going to be the continued message, and then they should contact their health care provider and also communicate with our school nurse.

“We’re not contact tracing outside of the schools; they’re not doing that any longer. As well as within our school system, within our data what we’re seeing is when we have been notifying families that their son or daughter has been in close contact and it’s their choice if they want to quarantine their son or daughter, very, very, very few are choosing to quarantine; they’re only quarantining if they’re showing symptoms.”

Keegan said he only questioned because they know it’s going to come up.

Link summed up what it all means moving forward.

“It means we would no longer be notifying parents if their child was thought to be, or is in close contact; if somebody tests positive, they must still isolate,” he said. “If it’s an unvaccinated household member, they would still have to follow the quarantine, or if it’s a vaccinated household member that is showing symptoms, they would still have to follow the quarantine.”