Faculty’s Next Steps With Uncleared Students
Soon the college will provide reports of how many “cleared” and “uncleared” students are on campus
Graphic by Christie Yeung/SAC.Media
Click here for the latest update (Dec. 28).
With Mt. SAC’s implementation of the Cleared4 reporting system underway, students testing and vaccination proof was past due for the fall semester. For Winter 2022 and onward, all students must be vaccinated to attend in-person and hybrid classes.
Protocols and next steps were sent out in an email to faculty on Sept. 15 on behalf of Vice President of Instruction Kelly Fowler, following several email alerts and messages from marketing to students warning them of the due date.
Several students have claimed that they have not received any notifications regarding any of the following information, as most students typically opt out of Mt. SAC’s alerts or check their student email regularly.
How We Got Here | Next Steps | Hard Numbers | Protocols & Cases | Positive Cases | Update Logs
How We Got Here
The Mt. SAC Board of Trustees held a special meeting on Aug. 13 to pass a resolution requiring vaccinations or weekly tests for unvaccinated individuals.
The college enacted these requirements on Aug. 16 with vaccine clinics and resource pages, including the promotion of a COVID-19 Dashboard to track cases.
Students and faculty had concerns about lack of updates to the dashboard and the safety of returning to campus, and this culminated in requests for equitable treatment from counselors and similar requests from classified unit members.
SAC.Media first discovered an outbreak in their newsroom on Aug. 25 after being notified on Aug. 30 by a student. A deep clean was requested on Aug. 30, but it was carried out on Sept. 2 after a second request. This timing broke from the traditional process of rooms being “deep cleaned” 24 hours after an exposure event, because it is unknown whether the student reported the incident to contact tracing. The instructor was not contacted by contact tracing.
There were 10 other documented room outbreaks on campus designated with a blue “deep clean” sticker as of Sept. 8. These stickers have since been removed from the newsroom, among other rooms.
The Los Angeles Community College District mandated vaccinations for their nine community colleges on Sept. 1. Other colleges have also followed the CSU and UC systems who have previously required and enacted vaccination mandates. Mt. SAC has decided to keep the two option system.
Vaccine clinics and their five locations were also announced on Sept. 2, and the first talks about “uncleared” students and potential consequences for not being cleared were addressed. This meeting also changed the policy regarding the excused withdrawal, “EW,” which ended on Sept. 6, as students must now submit a Petition for Exceptional Action to the Admissions office.
The required submission of test results and proof of vaccination went into effect as of Sept. 7 to Cleared4 with more options for submitting. The following week, students received a final notice that their weekly test results or vaccination proof was now due and that they would not be allowed access to in-person services if they do not submit their information.
On Sept. 17, faculty will be able to review their rosters to see which students are listed as having a “cleared” status and are “clear” to attend class or not. Starting Sept. 20, faculty will have to find means to deny students access to face-to-face classes to students who are “not cleared.”
Next Steps
For students who are “not cleared,” faculty are given a variety of actions to take.
Faculty are encouraged to verify that students are “not cleared” through Banner’s course roster or the Cleared4 mobile app, inform students that they are “not cleared” in private, refer them to the tents on campus for testing or the Cleared4 link for vaccination verification.
Students are not to be on campus if they are not cleared, and if they refuse the above actions, faculty are encouraged to call Mt. SAC Police and Campus Safety at (909) 274-4555. Students with questions are encouraged to call (909) 274-5122 or reach out through email [email protected].
Similarly, visitors to campus are required to fill out the Visitor Health Check form before and on the day of their visit with further safety information provided.
Students and staff experiencing symptoms are encouraged to stay home and fill out the Student Health Check Form for students and Employee Health Check Form for staff to start a multistep process.
Student spaces on campus, like learning labs, require students to show their cleared pass from Cleared4 with the QR code in order to access in-person services. Without that clearance, students will be denied entry.
The college also provided information regarding what faculty should do in two other situations as well:
Hard Numbers
These actions follow updated totals regarding vaccinations of student and employee groups.
At the Sept. 8 board meeting, Human Resources Operations Director Alexis Carter provided an update on the numbers provided by Mt. SAC President William Scroggins at the Aug. 13 meeting.
| Aug. 13 | Sept. 8 | |
| CSEA 262 | 80% | 83% |
| CSEA 651 | 30% | 39% |
| Confidential | High | 100% |
| Faculty | 65% (self-reporting limits) | 89% |
| Management | High | 89% |
Student vaccination rates also improved from 3,035 vaccination cards uploaded on the first day of class to 8,500 students that have uploaded proof as of Sept. 8. That reflects 38-39% of the student population marked as officially “cleared” at that time.
Additionally, enrollment figures were reported as such:
| August | Sept. 8 | |
| Face-to-Face | 67% | 54% |
| Online | 24% | 38% |
| Hybrid | 9% | 8% |
Protocol & Cases
If a student or staff member has a positive case, facilities will close down the room that the individual was in for a day for it to be cleaned. There will then be a temporary location provided for other classes that use the same room.
From there, that individual is to reach out to contract tracing whether it be through email or the form. That starts an investigative process where the contact tracers verify that the case is positive and will reach out to everyone who was within six feet of the individual for 15 minutes or more.
Vaccinated individuals are to self quarantine for 24 hours and unvaccinated individuals are to quarantine for 10 days. Instructors, if they feel able, are to teach online during their quarantine.
In the case of faculty needing to “pivot” their course online during the semester, a Canvas course with guidance has been provided to faculty in Fowler’s email as well. The course has further information on how to keep classes running during an outbreak in an in-person classroom using FOMAR and other means.
For information about positive cases, individuals are referred to the COVID-19 Dashboard. Updates have been made available once a week, but Dashboard updates will be made available twice a week starting on Sept. 20, according to the faculty email.
The Dashboard held data until Sept. 1 from the reporting period of March 20, 2020 until Aug. 22 of this year. It has since been updated on Sept. 2 and Sept. 11 with updates that include the weeks of Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, respectively.
From the reporting period of Sept. 5 onward, the Dashboard has since removed the isolation and quarantine metrics, and the overall totals for each. It focused solely on active cases until the Sept. 17 update, where it now focuses on new positive cases.
As of Sept. 23, the dashboard now includes statistics for weekly tests starting on the week of Sept. 19.
Positive Cases
Total Positive From March 20, 2020 Until Sept. 27, 2021
- Campus had a total of 408 cases, 337 students and 71 employees
Total Positive From Aug. 22 to Sept. 27
- Campus had 261 new cases, 225 students and 36 employees
Total Positives From Sept. 19 to Oct. 31
- Campus had 22,056 tests with 46 positives for a rate of 0.2%
- This averages to around 3,151 tests per week and 6 cases a week
Update: Dec. 28, 11:30 p.m.:
Visual charts have been created and updated from the initial version.
Update: Sept. 30, 4:30 p.m.:
All figures are now updated.
Update: Sept. 27, 4:00 p.m.:
All figures are now updated as of the latest update.
There was no difference to report aside from the inclusion of weekly testing data and the section on this article reporting the data has been simplified and updated to reflect this change.
Update: Sept. 17, 6:00 p.m.:
All figures are now updated as a result of the latest update.
The student cases for the Week of 8/29 have now been changed from 21 to 23.
The student cases for the Week of 9/5 have now been changed from 44 to 19.
The discrepancy here was between the dashboard updates:
The Sept. 11 update states there were 21 active cases for that week and the Sept. 2 update reaffirms that number as 21 new cases. As of the Sept. 17 update that figure has been changed to 23 students for “positive cases.”
Although this change shifts the number up two for positive cases, the total student cases figure only added one more for a total of 77 from the prior total of 76.
Employee cases, which was listed at 41 on the two earlier updates for Aug. 29, was also changed to 39 for consistency with the new metric.
Similarly, 44 students were provided as an active cases metric for the week of Sept. 5, but the number has been adjusted to 19 positive cases for the week.
This article was initially published on Sept. 16.
