West Ada School District to stop sending COVID-19 exposure notifications to families

Families in the West Ada School District will no longer receive notifications when their child may have been exposed to a student with COVID-19.

During a school board meeting Monday night, trustees voted 3-2 to remove the notifications.

Several trustees said they thought the notifications — which have become frequent as COVID-19 cases surge — were stoking people’s fears and adding to the stress families were feeling.

“We’re feeding into that fear,” board chair Rusty Coffelt said, referring to exposure notifications and the district’s COVID-19 dashboard. “We have reached a point, in my opinion, (that) we’re doing more harm than good.”

The West Ada School District stopped contact tracing several months ago to help ease the burden it created on staff members. The district also made masks optional after Thanksgiving break.

But the district had still been sending notifications to families when their children were in a classroom with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. That could mean if a student had several different classes with a classmate who was infected, that student’s parents could receive multiple exposure notifications from the potential exposures in different class periods.

Over the past several weeks, parents have shared on social media that they have received exposure notifications multiple days in a row or multiple notifications in one day. The increase in notifications comes as the highly infectious omicron variant spreads rapidly, causing a surge of COVID-19 cases in the community and leaving many schools struggling to cover for the high numbers of teachers and staff members out sick.

Trustees divided over whether to eliminate COVID-19 notifications

During the meeting Monday, trustees in support of removing the exposure notifications said they had heard from parents who said they didn’t think the constant notifications were helpful. Officials also pointed to the high rate of virus transmission in the community and said people were likely being exposed to COVID-19 anywhere they went.

Superintendent Derek Bub said groups of people have expressed concerns that the COVID-19 exposure notifications have been “extremely stressful for them.”

“With the community exposure the way it is … there is this expectation in our community right now that you’ve probably been exposed,” Bub said.

Because of the high rate of exposures in the community, vice chair Lori Frasure said she felt the frequent notifications weren’t necessary at this time. She said she recognized the board might need to revisit the issue in the future when virus transmission in the community was lower, but called it “helpful” and “respectful” to employees and the community to get rid of them for now.

Trustees who voted against stopping the notifications argued parents had a right to know whether their child was exposed to COVID-19 so they could make decisions based off that.

“I get a little bit nervous about stopping parent notifications of things that parents want to know about, because that’s a slippery slope for us to go down,” Trustee Amy Johnson said.

Trustee Rene Ozuna pointed to students with vulnerable family members, who need to know when they have potentially been exposed to the virus.

She also raised concerns about whether this decision would lead to less transparency from the district.

“A lot of the feedback I get is around our numbers and what we’re showing, and are we being transparent with what’s out there,” Ozuna said. “I’ve got to tell you, I think this is a step in the wrong direction.”