USD 475 changes quarantine requirements, BOE discusses mask mandates

Jan. 11—Geary County Schools USD 475 changed its COVID quarantine requirements to five days in order to keep enough teachers in schools for them to be operational. The Board of Education discussed other mitigation requirements, like masking, at its last board meeting.

At the Dec. 10 Board of Education meeting, Charles Martinez, interim director of Geary County Health Department, said the number of COVID cases rose over winter break and through the first few weeks of the new year.

Martinez said he suspects the rise in numbers comes from holiday break activities and the numbers should start to drop soon. He said the new variant of the virus, omicron, is more contagious but less serious.

Martinez said the district recorded 70 positive COVID cases, between students and staff, before winter break. During the break, it recorded 29 more cases. When students returned to school, the district administered 659 tests throughout the first week back, recording 123 more cases of COVID. On Dec. 10, it recorded between 75 and 100 new positive cases.

"We started looking at some changes that might need to occur in order to provide us to have staff available to keep our schools open," Rick Rook, the district's COVID-19 response coordinator, said.

Superintendent Reginald Eggleston said the school district required students and staff to quarantine for 10 days after coming in contact with the virus. With the rising number of cases, he said having teachers gone for that amount of time leads to the threat of having to shut schools down, so the district is changing the required quarantine time to five days, which follows the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations released Dec. 27.

"We're looking at quarantining five days, with the continuation of wearing the masks," Eggleston said. "The five days would allow us to bring staff back, students back and keep schools running."

Eggleston said students will continue to wear masks on buses and in the schools. He said the districts may have to take disciplinary action to keep students in line with the mask mandates.

Over winter break, Eggleston said the district sent a survey to its staff members to learn their thoughts on the current mask mandates in the schools. A total of 989 staff members answered the survey. According to the survey, around 55% of staff believe the district should continue its current mask mandates. Around 50% of staff responded that they believe the use of masks hinders students' learning in school.

In response to the question of how the district should help remedy the social and emotional impact COVID has had on students and staff, staff answered that the district should recruit additional staff, develop a social and emotional curriculum, which is one of the strategic plan goals of the school district, have more support from councilors, social workers and therapists and continue its COVID mitigation efforts.

Eggleston said the district is working on many of those options, but currently, it will continue its mitigation efforts and decrease the number of days those exposed to the virus should quarantine.

Mark Hatcher, board member said he would like to hear the voices of the parents and caregivers of the students, as well, and Eggleston said the district could send an anonymous survey to the community this week.

Hatcher said case numbers will rise and fall, but he would like to see the district have a fixed "win" in place, so that if the district stays under a specific threshold as far as number of people quarantined, the masks can be optional.

Jason Butler, board member, said he agreed that there should be a long-term plan concerning the COVID cases, but the board needs to consider what is best for students at this current time.

"I think you have to keep some of those measures in place, you just can't withdraw from that and let it spread. I guess with herd immunity, we will get to that point, but along the way, there are lots of people that suffer because of that," Beth Hudson, board member, said. "I think our job still has to be what's best for the schools at this point in time."

Hatcher said his main concern is for the long-term, because COVID will not cease to exist in coming years. He said he believes it would help the community and the schools if the district set a defined win.

"Defining a 'win' would be my strong recommendation, that we can define a win somehow by some statistic. That way everybody's on the same page," he said.

Kristy Haden, board member, said because the numbers are changing day to day, taking away the mask mandate based on a number, such as 6% of the district in quarantine, may mean continuing to lift and replace the mandate constantly throughout the year.

"I like taking something through the end of the school year, reassessing say in the summer and trying again, because otherwise, there is no consistency in this. We are going to be constantly changing week to week," she said.

Without consistency, Haden mentioned it may become more difficult to set standards for students and maintain discipline when students don't follow those standards.

"We are having a hard enough time enforcing the mask mandates on these kids right now," she said. "Making that change back and forth is not what our kids need either. They need consistency."

Hatcher asked what the criteria would be for the district to decide it was ready to make masks optional and allow the responsibility to lie on the individual and the family. Eggleston replied that he believes the district is in a good place to start working in that direction and said they will re-evaluate the mandates this spring.

Eggleston said the board decided around seven months ago to wait for April to look at the COVID numbers and vaccination rates and determine whether to make masks optional or not. Until then, the mitigation mandates continue to be in place.