CDC Carpool Recommendations for Schools

The CDC recommendation on carpools says, “we recommend avoiding pooled rides where multiple passengers are not in the same household.”  However, if that is not possible, the CDC recommended the following steps “to prevent getting and spreading COVID-19”:

• Stay home if you are sick or had close contact with someone who has the coronavirus.

• Everyone in the car must wear a mask.

• Everyone in the car must wash or sanitize their hands.

• Keep the car windows lowered to increase ventilation inside the car and run the car’s ventilation system on non-recirculation mode.

 

If you do need to carpool, we ask that you provide the school with the details of who is riding in the car daily.  We need to know the driver and student names for contract tracing should anyone test positive for COVID or be considered a close contact.  This will help the school and Spokane Regional Health District determine which students, teachers, and parents to quarantine if needed.  Please provide carpool information to ryan.peplinski@sgs.org.  

 

An article on Cars.com had these helpful suggestions:  “When considering a carpool with someone outside of your family, make sure that the bonus child is already in your child’s classroom cohort or pod, which is the subset of students who will be together in a hybrid class setting. It’s all about limiting who’s in your family’s pandemic bubble.

 

“When it comes to social distancing, things get tougher in a car. If you have a three-row SUV or minivan, you could put one child in the third row and the other child in the second row, but if your car is loaded with your own kids already, you should probably skip adding someone from outside of your family to your car to limit everyone’s risks.”