Raytown schools is latest district to return to mask mandate as COVID surge continues
The Raytown Quality School District again requires that all students, staff and visitors wear masks.
The district’s board of education voted Monday to re-instate the mask requirement beginning Tuesday and to last through at least Feb. 15. Masks will still be required on school buses.
As of Tuesday morning, the district was reporting 201 active COVID-19 cases and 529 people under quarantine. This accounts for positive cases among about 2% of students and staff in the district and about 5.3% under quarantine.
The highly contagious omicron and delta variants have caused coronavirus cases and hospitalizations to surge across the Kansas City metro in recent weeks, coinciding with a return to the classroom for many students.
Hospitals, including Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, are seeing a record number of COVID patients, and reporting record absenteeism rates among staff.
Schools, like hospitals, are operating with few staff as employees fall ill or are put under quarantine after an exposure to the virus.
Hospital leaders have urged a return to universal masking in schools, where many children are not vaccinated. Public health officials agree that masks are especially important in a school setting, where hundreds of people are in close contact for hours each day.
Last week, Kansas City’s City Council reinstated mandatory mask-wearing for all K-12 schools. And the North Kansas City City Council voted to extend its COVID-19 health order, requiring masks in school buildings. Kansas City Public Schools as well as the Kansas City, Kansas, school district never dropped their mask mandates.
Lee’s Summit and Park Hill school districts have also reinstated universal mask mandates.
The Star’s Sarah Ritter contributed reporting.
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 9:09 AM.
