Local schools face COVID

from Adrian Our Town | Fall 2021

by Town Money Saver

Adrian Symphony Orchestra

Aiming for normalcy

Lenawee County Schools want safety, stability in face of COVID

By Drew Saunders Contributing writer

Even in the face of a pandemic, some things never change.

“As with any start of a new school year, we’re full of excitement. We had hope that we were going to start the school year off back to what we used to know as normal. Obviously, with some of the [coronavirus] things happening here we are keeping an eye on it and watching it very closely,” Tecumseh Public Schools Superintendent Tony Rebo� aro said. “Ge� ng back to all of our extracurricular ac� vi� es – the bands, sports and choir – we are entering with great hope that we can come back to normalcy.”

Everyone is back to school across Lenawee County this year. A� er students were largely absent from school buildings across the country last school year, this fall all of Lenawee’s districts are going ahead with no mask or vaccine requirements; with the only federally-mandated excep� on being that all students and drivers u� lizing school buses will be masked for the whole trip to and from school. “We are not recommending masks. We are respec� ng all individual rights to wear a mask, but we are not manda� ng or requiring students or staff to wear masks,” Addison Community Schools Superintendent Steve Guerra said. “Right now the CDC and our health department is recommending, not requiring, the use of masks. We felt that un� l it is mandated, we will just go back to normalcy.”

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is s� ll very much raging in parts of the unvaccinated. Some states have even run out of hospital beds because this variant is much more easily transmi� ed, and people get sicker faster when they do get it. Some states have been so desperate to fi nd beds that they have fl own pa� ents to other states. According to NPR, one rural hospital in Kansas has fl own pa� ents as far away as Wisconsin just to fi nd an open bed. While previous strains of the disease tended to only really aff ect older people, the Delta variant is harming younger and younger people. This Delta wave is ongoing and there are fears that it will get worse as people start to spend more � me inside as winter approaches.

Telegram reported on September 16 that four parents in Tecumseh protested during a mee� ng of the school board over their decisions. According to the Telegram, this included at least one parent whose four-year-old had to quaran� ne while she and her husband struggled to fi nd day� me childcare.

School districts are increasingly introducing COVID dashboards; which are essen� ally webpages where all cases of COVID-19 are documented and presented on a regular basis to provide parents with regular informa� on. No students are specifi cally iden� fi ed, but these dashboards generally tell parents the date of the incident, the school it took place in and the number of cases.

President Biden announced on Sept. 7, by introducing a requirement through the Department of Labor in which all employers with 100 or more employees have all of their staff either get vaccinated or submit to weekly tests for the virus as a condi� on of employment. Republican governors across the country have made a point of trying to outdo each other in decrying the mandate as uncons� tu� onal. It is likely that this ma� er will eventually end up in the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled, in cases such as the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachuse� s decision, that the government does indeed have the power to enforce public health mandates. Some liberal groups are ques� oning how the current Supreme Court will rule with three appointees from former President Donald Trump on the bench.

Most of the school districts did not respond to this magazine’s ques� ons on how they will approach this new legal situa� on, and Superintendent Bob Behnke said that Adrian Public Schools is yet to determine how they will implement this new rule.

“At this � me, we are wai� ng to get clarifi ca� on from the state and local governments and their agencies as to how this may or may not aff ect us. Un� l we have this feedback it is not possible for us to create a plan or take ac� on,” Rebo� aro said.

Lenawee Intermediate School District Superintendent Mark Haag took a similar posi� on, saying in an email “I don’t think any of us know enough about the detail and implica� on of President Biden’s statement to make any informed comments” on the new Labor Department rule.

Safety Protocols

COVID-19 PREVENTION STRATEGIES

1. Promoting vaccination against COVID-19

2. Requiring consistent and correct mask use for all

3. Physical distancing to extent possible

4. Screening and testing

5. Ventilation

6. Handwashing and respiratory etiquette

7. Staying home when sick and getting tested

8. Contact tracing in combination with quarantine and collaborating with the local health department.

9. Cleaning and Disinfection

Source: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/coronavirus/COVID-19_Guidance_for _Operating_Schools_Safely_728838_7.pdf

“One part I can answer with clarity is that the LISD clearly has more than 100 individuals, more like 400, so it defi nitely will apply to us when there are more concrete details,” Haag added. “We have not seen a clear implementa� on date; therefore, we have not communicated much of anything with our staff due to the lack of details. So, in terms of staff reac� on, we really do not know.”

School districts have come to the conclusion that they will follow the guidelines of the Lenawee County Health Department – which did not formally respond to mul� ple requests for comment – on whether and when to enforce mask mandates or closures. The Michigan Department of Health & Human Services actually used Swiss cheese as an analogy in their recommenda� ons to the public.

Ge� ng inoculated with one of the vaccines that have been given full approval by the Food and Drug Administra� on is the fi rst step in protec� ng everyone and using face masks correctly is the next. Social distancing, temperature screenings, COVID-19 tes� ng and proper ven� la� on are also steps that the public can take. But unless something changes for the worse, a shutdown is not on the cards yet and neither is an indoor mask mandate. The federal government, again, is manda� ng masking on school buses. “Last year is a great example. We used local data to drive our decision. Right before return of spring break, we heard from Lansing to close down the high school and extend break for a week. But when we looked at our data, didn’t have any cases at the high school, to stop educa� on for our high school students when the data was saying to stay open didn’t make sense,” Benhke said in an interview with Maple City Our Town. “On the fl ip side, we had transmission rates at elementary that were high and of concern, so we did the opposite of what was recommended in Lansing. We closed elementary schools for 3 days to extend the return from spring break and worked with MDHHS.”

T the debate over whether or not to have mask mandates has divided school districts across the country. The Michigan State Medical Society is one of a long list of associa� ons of medical professionals recommending that mask mandates be reintroduced to protect people from the Delta variant – especially since children are much more suscep� ble to this much more deadly and easily transmissible strain than they were in previous waves. The result of poli� cians staking their careers on s� cking to a hardcore base of supporters on their side of the issue is that there is no unifi ed response across the country.

Whether or not parents choose to send their children to school with a mask or not may cause some bullying. While no district has a specifi c an� -bullying mandate when it comes to masks, all of the school offi cials asked by this magazine about this possibility said that this would not be tolerated because of their already exis� ng an� -bullying policies.

“I wish there was a hard line in the sand. We’ve been working with the health department if there can be,” Hagg said. “We have a variety of special educa� on and tech ed programs. Our primary programs where we have direct contact with students vary widely in both size, nature and loca� on. We don’t necessarily have a district-wide threshold where we shut everything down, because we might have a very small program that operates in a separate facility with a small number of students. … The threshold we had last year, with the excep� on of when the state had mandates, was 25 percent.”

This is to conform to the state’s pupil minimum to count as a date of instruc� on, Haag said.

Adrian Public Schools has also invested in its ven� la� on system. While not the only tool in the district’s tool box to fi ght COVID-19, Superintendent Behnke said it was part of his district’s arsenal in keeping students safe.

School offi cials are planning on taking full advantage of returning to in person instruc� on and all it brings along with it. This includes everything from social and emo� onal care for students who have spent so much � me isolated, to academic catch up; and from ge� ng back to normal sports seasons and reboo� ng the sense of community that schooling provides.

“From an instruc� onal point of view, the fact that we have a lot of work that needs to take place to help address closing the achievement gap for our students,” Behnke said in an interview with Adrian Our Town. “The students that missed instruc� on or were virtual, and we o� en see students who were placed into quaran� ne, and they came back, and there was another exposure from home, and they were out for another amount of � me, closing that gap with instruc� on is something that we’re excited about.”

Parents can opt to keep their students in virtual instruc� on in most cases. Some parents are taking advantage of that op� on, according to mul� ple school offi cials. In the event that a teacher needs to quaran� ne in Adrian, Behnke says that they will be able to teach from home. Tecumseh parents can also keep their students online. Parents can transi� on their students from in-person to online when they want to; but Rebo� aro said “We’d like to have [parents] make those decisions at the semester breaks” rather than in the middle of the semester.

Contact tracing will be done by the school nurse in Tecumseh and Adrian; in conjunc� on with the LCHD, which will collect all of the data. Behnke said that just like last year, the data will be the determining factor on if and when there are any school closures this year.

“Individuals who are fully vaccinated are not required to quaran� ne if they have remained asymptoma� c since their last exposure to COVID-19. Immunocompromised people need to consult their healthcare provider about these recommenda� ons, even if they are fully vaccinated,” the LCHD’s 2021-2022 COVID-19 School Guidance recommenda� on says. “Individuals previously diagnosed with COVID-19 who are asymptoma� c are not required to quaran� ne if they have recovered from COVID-19 within the previous three months, measured from the date of symptom onset; or if they are asymptoma� c, the date of the fi rst posi� ve test.”

Students who have been within three feet of a person with COVID-19 will have to quaran� ne for the LCHD’s recommended ten days. If they are exposed, the school must conduct contact tracing, the parents will be no� fi ed and will be asked to help monitor their children for two weeks. Students are recommended to a� end school virtually during this � me. Parents can s� ll choose to send their children to school in this instance, but they will be required to wear a mask at all � mes, even if the students hadn’t worn a mask before the exposure, as a condi� on of being able to return in person.

Benkhe explained that contact tracing with families and anyone else known to be in contact with an infected person gave them “a good reset” to test and add to the data and coordinate with the LCHD rather than shut down an en� re building.

“At some point, there was talk previously above 5% posi� vity, everything gets shut down. But last year we were able to, even with higher posi� vity rates in the county, s� ll able to move forward with school,” Benkhe said. “So the ebb and fl ow of the data and the ebb and fl ow of the virus because the informa� on we know about the virus is more now, but the evolu� on of the delta variant is alarming and concerning as we go into the year too.”

Some districts did not respond to requests for comment by press ti me.