It’s really great to hear how strict they’re implementing guidelines at SLO! Now, fingers crossed that S21 gets in to experience it all!!!
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We live in SLO. I’ve heard that Cal State faculty have been told to expect to teach in person but be ready to pivot to online if necessary. Some hands-on classes at Cal Poly have been in person this year. They have started weekly testing for all students who spend time on campus.
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Two times a week! Started winter quarter!
I have a senior at Cal Poly now (she’s been home since last March when everything shut down). The only issue I have with Cal Poly SLO is that if someone tests positive in the dorms, or they were exposed to someone who tested positive, they are expected to isolate/quarantine in place, meaning their own dorm rooms/apartments. They’re even allowed to leave to get food. In some of the traditional style dorms (not apartments), if someone on your floor tests positive, because of communal bathrooms, the whole floor is quarantined. There are students who have been quarantined 95% of the time because someone is always testing positive on their floor! Other colleges have set up separate housing for quarantining/isolating students for 10-14 days following CDC guidelines with food delivery included. I hope Cal Poly rethinks their covid-safe plans for next year (assuming the numbers are the same with the variant strains). My youngest graduated high school class of 2020 but deferred at her chosen college (USD) and re-applied to Cal Poly (she was accepted last year). But after hearing how they handle their covid-positive students, she’ll have to seriously reconsider picking Cal Poly if she’s accepted again.
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I hope they do rethink this quarantine plan. And I also think/hope that vaccinations may change how things play out as far as how they deal with a positive test or exposure.
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Our Bay Area school district will start to reopen (hybrid model) starting with the younger kids, March 29 and the last group 10-12th grade planning to reopen April 17th. All this is dependent on teachers and staff being offered vaccinations. The city has allocated vaccine for teachers and staff in a school-district-only link for appointments, which they will receive it in waves, starting next week.
High school has been in distance-learning mode since March 12th.
I’m feeling like vaccine for CA educators is becoming more available, which is a great sign for our Fall 2021 students having in-person options.
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Thank you very much for this reply. It is interesting and makes me realize that it would be worthwhile to ask what colleges quarantine plans are for Fall 21 (should they be needed). Being confined to your dorm room for that long is suboptimal. Of course we are all hoping the vaccines will resolve this but still some variables out there:(
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From my experience with how everything went down last year for my class of 2020 kid and all her friends, all the colleges talked a big talk. They all said they were hopeful and optimistic that things would be “normal” but they’d plan for safety and testing just in case. In some cases, colleges said they were going to be open with in-person classes, freshmen in dorms, etc. and waited until just a few weeks before move-in to announce they wouldn’t be able to do any of that. Granted, it was all brand new and no one could’ve predicted anything, and they’re all trying their best to provide a great education and experience for our students. But it was a major disappointment for everyone. Again, not the colleges’ fault at all. However, I wish we hadn’t been as eager to believe their cheery videos and emails about how students would have a normal first year experience with just a few modifications. Cal Poly is currently planning on freshmen being in double rooms for next year and they are opening their housing application for continuing students on March 2 (currently there are hardly any rooms available on campus for sophomores-seniors since all freshmen are in singles this year). At this time last year, incoming freshmen were told they would be in doubles or triples, and it wasn’t until a few months later they were told only doubles, and then it was changed to singles only. I’m hoping the US will have achieved near herd immunity by August/September so we can all go back to normal (if that is even possible), but I’m not holding my breath.
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My son lives in the dorms. If someone tests positive on his floor that person is relocated to dorms that are used for isolation only. The rest of that floor is quarantined for 14 days. I think they are doing the best they can under the circumstances. He lives in Yakitutu and his floor has not been quarantined…yet…
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A friend whose son is at SLO tested positive and he was placed in special isolation housing with food brought to him for ten days… so it seems they have quarantine housing. He was moved from the dorms to some apartments on campus for isolation.
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So it’s the students who are exposed but test negative that have to quarantine in place, which seems unsafe to me. Especially when they are still allowed to go out to get food. I know other colleges (same size as Cal Poly) who also place students into quarantine housing who have been exposed (IDed through contact tracing) and test negative for 14 days (while those who test positive stay for 10). We received an email from Cal Poly a few weeks ago about the alarming increase of positive tests on-campus. I will give them the benefit of the doubt though. They can only do so much, and they are doing their best, and this is an unprecedented pandemic with no guidebook on how to handle everything.
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That particular incident was a batch of false positive tests because of a particular lab technician’s error. That was very unfortunate but they have since changed the company that handles the testing. It was not an unexplained rise in cases it was a lab error. You can read more details on the Cal Poly website.
Yes I remember the incident with the false positives. I’m not referring to that. It was an email from VP of Student Affairs Keith Humphrey sent on January 22 that starts:
To the student community,
We are going to be direct. We have started to see a concerning rise in cases of COVID-19 among the student body recently, especially among asymptomatic students.
Students are getting these results from participating in Cal Poly’s ongoing testing program at either the Performing Arts Center or Poly Canyon Village. Unfortunately, these students didn’t think they had COVID-19 at the time of their test and could be unintentionally spreading the virus through interactions with fellow students.
We need to do all that we can to reverse this trend. Testing is only part of the equation for safeguarding yourselves and our campus community. A negative test represents a single point in time and does not mean that a student cannot go on to develop, carry and spread the disease. More importantly, a negative test is not a free pass to set aside precautions. Now, more than ever, it is critical that we all remain diligent about taking precautions to limit the spread of disease —regardless of the outcome of recent tests.
There’s more but I won’t post it all here. But, I think it’s great they’re testing on-campus students twice a week (every three days). Like I said before, I’m hopeful things will be more normal at Cal Poly and all the other schools by Fall.
Understood. However, that email was sent based off of the false positive error.
On Jan 27 a follow up email was sent and that is the one I was referring to.
Dear Campus Community:
Last week we sent a message to campus in response to a concerning, rapid increase we were seeing in the rate of positive COVID-19 tests among our students. Avellino Labs - the third-party lab that Cal Poly contracts with to process our asymptomatic COVID-19 tests - reported a significantly higher number of positive tests from samples collected on one particular day, compared to the positivity trend rates we had been seeing for campus. On the day after this one-day increase, the number of positive results significantly declined. Given this unexpected spike and out of an abundance of caution, we asked Avellino Labs to re-process and reconfirm those results while we also moved forward with our protocol to isolate students who test positive.
Yesterday evening, Avellino informed Cal Poly that it discovered a technician error in Avellino’s lab processing, which led them to mistakenly identify and report 41 false positive tests.
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Ah, I got the dates of the emails wrong. Thanks for clearing that up and I apologize for the confusion. From a safety perspective, I still don’t like their quarantine in place policy for students who were exposed. However, from a mental health perspective, is it better to place those students in a separate dorm for 14 days to quarantine? Especially if they keep testing negative. I don’t know.
OOS decisions are rolling out in portals!!! No email notification.
My son got accepted from MA, Econ! We are so happy and excited as it’s his first choice!! Much celebrating will be going on here this week/weekend!!
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daboys, congrats! Are you OOS or instate?
Please post decision and stats here: **Cal Poly SLO STATS ONLY Freshman Class of 2025**
OOS - Massachusetts