All the above are worth a try. I guess the only wrong approach for fall 2020 spring 2021 is to say we need to do things just like we have always done them. Covid highlights flaws in the system. Nimble schools will come up with innovative ways to make things work. Others will flounder.
Just my opinion.
I believe Brown School and Law School are both graduate programs. All the others are undergrad.
Appalachian State just announced they are discontinuing their men’s soccer program immediately…
Deleted
Moving on 
Actually, reading further, App State discontinued men’s soccer, men’s tennis and men’s track.
Looks like the two WUStL divisions that are calendar-separated (Brown School (public health and social work) and Law School) offer study for graduate and professional degrees only, so there are likely few students who want to take courses in these divisions along with courses in the other divisions that also offer undergraduate instruction.
My son’s university had a commuter student test positive sometime between 3/10 and 3/13. The university notified the entire school but in that correspondence they said those determined to have been in contact with the student would be notified separately. They then sent emails to all students that were in the positive student’s classes. Violation of HIPAA? I cant answer that but I imagine the university had checked with the appropriate authorities before contacting the students directly.
@bluebayou HUh? I was talking about high school or younger kids when I said parents should be contacted if their child was near someone with the virus. Isn’t that the whole point of contact tracing? How does HIPAA apply when states are using contact tracing? They wouldn’t tell the family which child it is but simply that their child has been near someone with the virus, right?
@momzilla2D A friend of mine’s son is a rising soph at Wash U and she just told me about that email. She (and I) aren’t understanding the reason the undergrads go back later instead of going earlier like, say, ND. And you’re right to say what about Thanksgiving? Kids going home and coming back for three weeks more of class I guess.
@homerdog Yeah, I kind of just got to the point where I decided to just deal with whatever comes. There are an endless number of different ways to do it, and they’re never going to please everyone. My own viewpoint, I’m sure fails to consider 75% of the issues the school has to consider. So, rather than stress over why they did it that way, I’ll just go with the flow. That’s kind of why I quit participating in this thread. While I’m sure schools are trying to do what’s best for all their students, my own personal opinion has zero influence on what they ultimately decide. So why stress?
one of the keys for HIPAA privacy is being able to figure out the identify of the infected person. So, yeah, Homer, I was addressing K12.
If you only spot notify the ~8 kids who sat immediately around the infected person, it would be rather easy to figure out who the infected kid was. If you notify the whole school, then privacy of the individual can be maintained.
Notifying just the classroom is dicey. Some schools have <20 students per class, others have 35+.
Make sense?
@bluebayou Yes.
But that’s not how I thought contact tracing works. Or maybe it just works that way for minors? I thought contact tracers will contact you if you’re been within six feet of someone with the virus for more than 15 minutes. Then, you get a call. I assumed that don’t tell you who that person is of course. But, in the case of kids, you mean they won’t even narrow down who has been closer to the sick child? Hm. That’s going to be a problem for schools and keeping them open. One eleventh grader with the virus and 3000 kids don’t go to school?
In Illinois at our HS, if a kid has an infectious disease and the contact tracer determines certain individuals have been in close contact (beyond classmates) with the infected kid, those students/parents/individuals are notified directly, some in addition to the email that the entire class (not the entire school) receives from the school nurse.
The name of the infected kid is not divulged in any of those communications…not from the school nurse (via the whole class communication), or from the contact tracer at the county health dept (who contacts those who were in close contact, if any).
The school nurse also communicates directly with any adults in the school who had close contact with the student. I assume they don’t share the student’s name, but it’s probably easy to figure out.
@homerdog Found a Q&A for WashU. No fall break, only Thanksgiving Day off. Travel may require 14 day quarantine before returning to class.
https://emergency.wustl.edu/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/covid-19-faqs/admitted-students
Just clarifying: men’s indoor track was cut but not men’s XC or outdoor track.
My son’s school released their academic calendar today, starting a bit earlier and ending by T-day, as many of he other schools are doing. They also offered up a 2 week refund of housing since they won’t be on campus in December. I thought that was very generous of them and wonder, are other schools doing the same?
@momzilla2D wrote:
Wow, no Thanksgiving break. That’s old school!
I took the contact tracing course offered on Coursera. One of the examples they gave was contacting someone who had been exposed to a CV positive person in choir practice, which was disclosed. If you only have a few folks in choir practice and you know one of them has been sick, pretty easy to figure out who it is. You can’t name names, but the examples they gave indicated you could share where/how they may have been exposed.
@homerdog Actually, I misread it. They get 2 days off.
“Thanksgiving break has been reduced by one day – the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is now an instructional day. ”
Some schools (Caltech/MIT/UChicago) never have fall or Thanksgiving break.
If the school or the local health department is at all competent, the families would be contacted if the infected student had been sitting near their child for over 15 minutes. The families would not be told the name of the infected student, merely that their child had been exposed. The contact tracer would then talk about their child possibly isolating, probably being tested and so forth.
For privacy reasons, health departments don’t release the names of infected people. But that doesn’t mean they don’t tell other people they were exposed. They do! They just don’t say, exposed by who.
In a school, I imagine the grapevine would work quickly to out the infected kid. But the health department and the school administrators aren’t going to release names.