West Ada school board reviews COVID-19 policies. Here’s what trustees decided
The West Ada School District will continue to require masks in the classroom — for now.
During a four-hour meeting Wednesday, the school board voted to keep the mandate in place and revisit the requirement if one of three things took place.
Those include when vaccines are made available to kids ages 5-11, and families have had adequate time to get their kids vaccinated if they choose to; when crisis standards of care are removed from St. Luke’s and Saint Alphonsus hospitals within the Treasure Valley; or when the rate of community transmission in Ada County moves to moderate. It is currently high.
The board also voted for the district to stop contact tracing while the mask mandate is in place to help alleviate some of the pressure on staff. Now, in lieu of contact tracing, when positive cases are identified in the classroom, the district will notify all students and parents from the classrooms that the person who was positive was in.
The decisions came after the board heard from officials from the Department of Health and Welfare and Central District Health, along with the health services supervisor and supervisor of counseling for the district.
A bulk of the meeting was devoted to listening to and asking questions of the experts, ranging from why it was coming down to school boards to put into place mandates, what kinds of measures the district should look at to ease its safety measures and the importance of contact tracing.
“When do we stop having to be responsible for community health decisions?” Chair Amy Johnson asked. “I appreciate the challenge the hospitals are in so much. I appreciate the challenge that the community is in so much. But I’m struggling with why it’s all on the backs of public schools.”
School boards in Idaho have had to make their own decisions on whether to mandate masks and what COVID-19 mitigation protocols to use. There are no mask mandates from Idaho, Ada County or the four cities where West Ada schools are located.
Health officials said during the meeting that case counts, positivity rates and hospitalization rates remain high across the state. Masking, they said, is an effective way to slow the spread of the virus — and the school district’s size means its decision could have a big effect on the community.
“You have more students in your schools than 34 of our 44 counties have for their entire county population,” Russ Duke of Central District Health told the board. “The impact of your decision is not insignificant … I would really caution you not to lift a mask requirement, especially while the hospitals are still operating in crisis standards of care.”
The district’s COVID-19 policies have been changed several times over the past few months.
Days before students returned to the classroom this school year, the board approved a policy that mandated masks, but allowed parents to opt their kids out. About one-third of students were excused from wearing a mask.
But about a month ago, as coronavirus cases surged in Idaho, Superintendent Derek Bub used his authority to put into place a strict mask mandate, temporarily nullifying the opt-out forms.
The district said it’d review the strict mandate after two weeks. It was extended twice.
Mask mandates have been a tense debate in the district for months. Parents in yellow shirts have packed district meetings in support of mask-optional policies, saying they deserve to have a choice in the safety protocols their kids follow. Many others, though, have advocated for masks in the classroom, saying they are a tool to help protect students and staff as COVID-19 cases remain high, including among children.
Becca Savransky covers education for the Idaho Statesman in partnership with Report for America. The position is partly funded through community support. Click here to donate.
