Mandate not on agenda, though that doesn’t stop people from griping at school board

Sheila McGuire, Herald Reporter
Posted 9/21/21

School Board meeting

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Mandate not on agenda, though that doesn’t stop people from griping at school board

Posted

EVANSTON — The bulk of the regular monthly meeting for the Uinta County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees on Tuesday, Sept. 7, was spent on a COVID update and hearing comments from the public about the COVID situation.

Superintendent Ryan Thomas said that, as of that date, there were 12 students and eight staff members out with confirmed COVID-19 infection. Another 176 students had been confirmed as close contact exposures by that point in the school year. Exposure means a student had been within six feet of a person later confirmed to have COVID-19, for 15 minutes or more, during the period when the person would have been contagious.

Thomas said the district had been working to provide options for parents of students who have been exposed. During the majority of last school year, students for the most part did not need to quarantine if exposed because mask orders were in place and the Wyoming Department of Health and Department of Education amended quarantine rules to stipulate that if both parties were masked, quarantine was not required. This year, however, no mask orders are in place; without that order, districts have had to develop quarantine rules working in conjunction with public health offices.

This year parents currently have four options if their child is exposed. The first option is for a student to remain home and quarantine for 10 days. Alternatively, a student may return to school immediately provided the student wears a mask; the mask will need to be worn for a minimum of five days following exposure. If the student is tested and receives a negative result after day five, the mask can be taken off; if the parents opt not to have the child tested, the mask must be worn for two weeks. Finally, the fourth option is for parents to take their child for an antibody test; if COVID-19 antibodies are present, a student can return to school immediately with no mask requirement. Thomas said antibody tests can be accessed at City Drug or from private doctor offices.

Thomas said the district’s goal is to keep students in classrooms and said that, thus far, there is no evidence that much spread is occurring in the school settings; only two of the students known to have been exposed by that point had gone on to test positive, he said.

Both Thomas and board chair Jami Brackin expressed concern about the transmission levels in the community. Thomas said this school year is already different from the previous year in terms of the number of students quarantined and said it appears the Delta variant is more contagious than previous variants of SARS CoV-2. Brackin said the level of transmission in Uinta County is at the highest level it can be, which she said was “scaring the beans out of me right now.”

Board members also discussed a COVID leave policy for district staff, which would at first be in place for nine weeks, or the first quarter of school, and could be extended if conditions warrant. The leave policy would allow staff to take paid time off for COVID-related issues, without utilizing regular leave, for a prescribed time period depending on the circumstances.

Staff with COVID symptoms could take up to five paid days off work to access testing and wait for results and could take up to five paid days and an additional five days paid at 50% of daily rate for orders to quarantine due to exposure. The policy would provide five paid days and another five days at 50% of daily rate to care for an immediate family member who has been ordered to isolate due to COVID-19 infection. Finally, the policy would provide five paid days and another five days paid at 50% of daily rate for an individual staff member sick with COVID-19.

The initial policy proposal included an additional 30 days paid at 50% of daily rate; however, board member Christa Barker, who is a board-certified family nurse practitioner, said she was uncomfortable with using taxpayer dollars to fund 30 days, or six weeks, of leave for staff with an extended COVID-related illness, given the availability of vaccination. Barker said it was everybody’s choice whether to be vaccinated or not; however, she also pointed out that those in the community who are dealing with extended illness at the present time are those who have opted not to be vaccinated. She indicated she didn’t believe it was appropriate to provide additional taxpayer-provided benefits to those who choose not to receive the vaccine. The board voted to approve the COVID leave policy without the additional 30 days at 50% daily rate.

Although no action items were on the agenda regarding mask mandates or moving to a more restrictive tier of school, during public comments many community members expressed frustration with masks, quarantine and isolation orders and other issues related to the ongoing pandemic. When some pushed back on Barker’s assertion that the unvaccinated are those dealing with lengthy illnesses, she said that locally 100% of individuals requiring hospital admission or transfer to other hospitals due to COVID-19 symptoms have been unvaccinated. When some insisted COVID-19 is a virus similar to the flu that everyone will just have to learn to live with, Barker said COVID is not like the flu. “In my 16 years of practice, I’ve never seen our ICU at the hospital full,” she said. “I’ve never seen IHC (Intermountain Healthcare hospitals in Utah) call and say they won’t take any more of our transfers.”

Dr. Alan Brown, Evanston pediatrician, also spoke during public comments and said he was “disheartened” to see how few people at the meeting were masked, given the known effectiveness of mask usage to prevent transmission. Brown said increased mask usage would help ensure kids are able to stay in school and continue participating in athletics and other activities, disrupting the school year as little as possible. “Kids handle the masks just fine,” he said. “They seem to be a much bigger problem for adults.”

Brown also pushed back on the notion that there was disinformation on both sides of the COVID issue. He said there had been some mistakes made when it came to messaging from public health experts and government officials, but that was not the same as the deliberate disinformation from some sources and asked people to be more careful in where they are turning for information.

Toward the end of the comments, Brackin reiterated the district’s goal is to keep kids in school with as little disruption and as close to “normal” as possible; however, she said they are watching numbers very closely.