With so many quarantines, Kansas City area school district finally mandates masks
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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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Raymore-Peculiar students don’t return to classrooms until Monday, but the district has already reported enough quarantines due to COVID-19 exposures that officials decided Friday to mandate masks.
The district in Cass County was one of the last major systems in the immediate Kansas City metro that planned to keep masks optional this fall. On Aug. 10, the school board voted 5-2 to only recommend, not mandate, masks.
But this past week, the district brought staff and some students into buildings for back-to-school events, such as a “meet the teacher” night. After more than two hours of activities, Superintendent Mike Slagle said 17 students were required to quarantine after being exposed to the virus without wearing masks. He said they will miss the first 10 days of school.
He said there was another exposure on a school bus, but because students were wearing masks per a federal mandate, they were not required to quarantine. And several others were exempt from quarantining because they were wearing masks and vaccinated.
Slagle said that if everyone wears masks, the number of people required to quarantine will be dramatically reduced. That means, fewer disruptions to students’ learning and the school district’s operations.
“None of us like masks. I like to see students’ smiles as well. We all do. It pains me to have to suggest this to you,” Slagle told the school board at a special meeting Friday evening. “But our administration feels if you really want to maximize the amount of time in classrooms, more students wearing masks will get us there.”
The seven-member board voted unanimously, with one member abstaining, to require masks for all students and staff in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, indoors, when social distancing is not possible. It will review the decision at its Sept. 9 meeting.
At the meeting, some members of the crowd yelled over school officials, and were eventually asked to leave the building.
Earlier in the week, another holdout, the Turner school district in Kansas City, Kansas, made a similar decision, following several COVID-19 cases and quarantines among unmasked and unvaccinated students and staff within the first six days of the new semester. It implemented a mask mandate on Thursday.
Health officials have urged schools to require everyone to wear masks as the delta variant rampages through the community, leading to hospitals reaching capacity and more children contracting the virus. 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.
Requiring masks will help prevent transmission of the virus in schools, health officials agree. And per health department guidance, in many cases, if students or teachers were wearing masks when exposed to COVID-19, and remain asymptomatic, they will be allowed to remain in school.
Most other school districts in the region have mask mandates. But elsewhere in Cass County, Belton and other smaller districts have so far decided to keep them optional.
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.
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 7:24 PM.
