Kansas City area school district had no mask rule. COVID and quarantines changed that
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COVID-19 safety in schools
For the new school year, as COVID-19 cases are surging and hospitals are turning away patients, Kansas City area districts are making decisions about safety.
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The Turner school district, one of the few in the area that had made masks optional, is now requiring them — following several COVID-19 cases among students and staff and “a significant amount of quarantines of unvaccinated, unmasked individuals” just six days into the new school year.
The district in Kansas City, Kansas, brought students back to classrooms last week without a mask mandate in place, despite warnings from health officials as coronavirus cases surge. As of Wednesday morning, the district reported 23 active cases among students, and four staff cases.
Spokeswoman Lauren Aiello said she did not have a specific number of individuals required to quarantine after being exposed to the virus, but officials decided the numbers were significant enough to change the masking policy.
It’s a scenario that health officials have feared, as the delta variant rampages through the community, leading to hospitals reaching capacity and more children contracting the virus. Health experts warned that unmasked and unvaccinated classrooms could lead to outbreaks and even building closures, due to too many individuals being pulled out of school.
“We believe that in-person learning in our schools is what is best for our students. The need to quarantine unvaccinated, unmasked individuals is not sustainable for our staff and is taking too many students out of our classrooms,” district officials said in a letter to families.
Aiello said that only individuals who were in close contact with the virus, and were unmasked and/or unvaccinated, were required to quarantine.
On Tuesday, the school board unanimously approved a universal mask mandate, which went into effect on Thursday.
“This change will significantly reduce the need to implement quarantines, which will result in fewer interruptions in academics, activities, athletics and other services,” officials said.
Most other school districts in the region have mask mandates. But the Raymore-Peculiar district will begin the school year on Monday with masks optional. The Belton district also is not mandating masks. On the Kansas side in Johnson County, districts are requiring everyone to wear masks, except for Spring Hill and Gardner-Edgerton, which are only requiring them for younger students.
Aiello said that individuals who were exposed to the positive cases were given three quarantine options: Unvaccinated, unmasked close contacts could quarantine for 10 days. Or they could quarantine for seven days and then return to school if they test negative. Or they could remain in school, wear a mask and agree to rapid COVID-19 tests daily for seven days.
“Many of those chose the option to continue coming to school and doing the daily rapid test. While we are glad that those students chose to continue coming to school with additional mitigation procedures in place, the need to do rapid testing on those students each day is taxing on our nurses, who have other non-COVID medical needs to attend to, and so by all students being masked, we will be able to limit the need to do the rapid testing,” she said.
If students were exposed to the virus but were wearing a mask, they will not need to quarantine.
“That being said, our nurses will be diligent about contact tracing and we may need to give those three quarantine options to families if we find, for example, that students were sitting next to a positive case while unmasked at lunch. The safety of our students and staff is our top priority,” Aiello said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 3:06 PM.
