Schools K-12

The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) K-12 school page addresses the need for schools, local health departments, and healthcare providers to work together to support the goal of all students returning to school safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To ensure that ADPH county health departments are providing consistent and up-to-date information to local schools, this page provides resources and forms necessary for reporting.

School Guidance

• CDC - Operational Guidance for K-12 Schools and Early Care and Education Programs to Support Safe In-Person Learning
• AAP - COVID-19 Guidance for Safe Schools and Promotion of In-Person Learning

Monitoring & Reporting COVID-19 in Schools

• School nurses should continue to report school COVID-19 outbreaks and outbreaks of any kind using the Communicable Disease Report Card and selecting Outbreak as the Reportable Disease/Health Condition.
• The online COVID-19 case report card should only be used to report individual COVID-19 cases. School nurses no longer need to report these to public health unless they personally administer or proctor a COVID-19 test.
• For COVID-19 outbreaks use the following definition:
  • 10% absenteeism across the entire school due to COVID-19
    OR
    3 or more lab-confirmed cases within a core group (which includes but is not limited to an extracurricular activity, cohort group, classroom, before/after school care, etc.) having positive test results within 14 days of each other

**Please remember this applies only to COVID-19 and not to other communicable diseases.