Johnson County school district with weak COVID rules is warned it has worst case rate

The Spring Hill school district, which has the most lenient COVID-19 rules of any public district in Johnson County, has seen far higher infection rates among students than neighboring districts, health officials report.

Now, health officials are warning the district they are concerned by the trend.

Every other district in the county requires everyone to wear masks at all grade levels. But in Spring Hill, in southern Johnson County, masks are only required for younger students, and were made optional for high schoolers. In addition, the school board agreed to allow parents to sign mask exemption forms — which previously required a doctor’s signature — essentially making masks optional for students districtwide.

The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment sent a letter to the district on Friday, including a graph comparing the COVID-19 rates in various school districts.

Health department data shows that Johnson County schools have been averaging a COVID-19 incidence rate of about 3 cases per 1,000 students since Aug. 15.

But this month, Spring Hill’s rate skyrocketed to more than 15 per 1,000 students.

“We are concerned about the high incidence rate of COVID-19 and reported clusters in the Spring Hill School District as compared to other school districts in Johnson County, Kansas,” Johnson County health department spokeswoman Jennifer Dunlay said in an email to The Star, citing increased hospitalizations among children because of the highly transmissible delta variant.

Johnson County officials also sent the data in an email to the Board of County Commissioners.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment lists Spring Hill High School as a COVID cluster site, with six new cases reported within 14 days of Sept. 8. That week, the high school held a cheer clinic, which 33 schools across 18 districts attended. Many participants were exposed to COVID-19 and have been required to quarantine, Fox4 reported.

District spokesman Christopher Villarreal said that based on data reported through the school nurse, for the week of Aug. 29 through Sept. 4, there were 57 cases, for an incidence rate of 15.47 per 1,000 students.

The following week, there were 47 cases, for a rate of 12.75 per 1,000.

Spring Hill’s COVID dashboard shows a drop in cases last week. On Monday, Villarreal said eight cases were reported, for a rate of 2.17 per 1,000. But the dashboard was updated on Tuesday, showing 11 confirmed cases for that week so far.

And later Tuesday afternoon, Johnson County health department spokeswoman Barbara Mitchell provided updated numbers. She said that county data shows 25 cases reported in the district last week, a decrease from previous weeks.

Mitchell said the numbers are regularly updated as more case investigations are completed.

The district has no current plans to change its COVID rules.

“Spring Hill School District administrators and Board of Education are constantly monitoring the situation,” Villarreal said in an email to The Star. “We have had some schools implement additional mitigation. At this time, there are no Board action items scheduled related to COVID-19 mitigation.”

Villarreal said the health department encouraged the district to review its COVID mitigation guidance.

The COVID-19 incidence rate is calculated by taking the weekly number of cases, divided by the number of enrolled students. That number is then multiplied by 1,000. The rate is often used to compare trends in new cases across jurisdictions or school districts of different sizes, said Johnson County Epidemiologist Elizabeth Holzschuh.

Conveying the numbers a different way, some weeks, the Spring Hill district has reported nearly as many COVID-19 cases as its neighboring districts that have thousands more students.

These statistics are drawn from school districts’ online dashboards, which use slightly different time frames than the one used by the Spring Hill school nurse.

From Aug. 27 through Sept. 2, Spring Hill — with roughly 3,700 students — reported 49 new student cases, according to the district’s online dashboard. The Olathe district — with nearly 10 times that number, roughly 30,000 students — reported 114.

From Sept. 3-9, Spring Hill reported 61 student cases, while Olathe reported 69.

The Blue Valley district — with about 22,000 students — reported 48 student cases from Aug. 25 through Sept. 1. The following week, it reported 35.

“Our cases are trending down, and I don’t have a comment other than that,” school board member Sharon Mitchell told The Star.

Other board members did not return The Star’s request for an interview or declined to comment.

Board member Ali Seeling, a registered nurse who pushed for parents to have the option to sign mask exemption forms, is disputing the data and arguing that political motivations are behind the health department sharing it.

“Quarantining HEALTHY children is a loss of educational time. People are LOSING THEIR JOBS because they can’t stay home with their ‘potentially exposed’ child AGAIN. STOP playing political games with our children and our families. IT IS ENOUGH,” she wrote on Facebook.

“Here is my news headline: I am not interested in being a part of your fear tactics to scare other districts. It is clear we are trying to be made an example of. However, the data just doesn’t match up. The OUTCOMES do not support your fear campaign.”

On the phone with The Star, Seeling said she was filing an open records request with the county, but would not offer any other comment.

Public health experts agree that masks are an effective and reasonable tool to help mitigate transmission of COVID-19. Combined with social distancing, hand washing, cleaning and regular testing, masks help slow the spread of the virus. They are especially important in schools, experts agree, as children under the age of 12 are not yet eligible for the vaccine.

Local and national health officials have been urging districts to require universal masking this fall, worried that unmasked classrooms will lead to COVID-19 outbreaks and school closures.

Throughout this month, before the health department sent its warning, several Spring Hill parents emailed The Star to share their concerns. Many have fought for the district’s mask mandate to be extended to all grade levels.

Spring Hill mother Laura Langham said she withdrew her two children from the district after the school board decided to allow parents to sign mask exemption forms.

“I was already a little hesitant because compared to some other school districts, Spring Hill had a lot less mitigation procedures in place. I was already a little worried. But I thought masks would be protection enough to get them into school,” she told The Star. “But whenever they did the parent exemptions, it made it almost like a joke. It really made me fear for our family.”

Before the school year began, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners issued a health order mandating masks in public and private schools that serve students as old as sixth grade. Spring Hill is following that order by requiring masks in schools with younger students.

But all other public districts in Johnson County went beyond that and extended the mask mandate to all grades.

The Spring Hill district previously reported to the school board that 443 students had secured mask exemptions. That’s nearly 17% of the more than 2,600 students in Spring Hill elementary and middle schools.