District will reevaluate masking rules at the start of the new year
The Windsor Unified School District (WUSD) Board of Trustees voted Nov. 9 to continue requiring students in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade wear masks outdoors. The decision largely hinged on the board’s desire to both give parents the time to get their kids vaccinated and to see how upcoming holidays might impact case rates.
The board will revisit the issue of TK through fifth-grade students masking outdoors roughly two weeks after students come back to school in January. The specific criteria that the board is planning to follow to make the outdoor masking decision will be discussed at the board’s meeting in December.
Quarantine rates drop while state alters contact tracing approach
On Aug. 30, the district decided to have TK-5 students wear masks outdoors in an effort to lower the number of students the district had to place on modified quarantine. Since then, the number of students placed on full or modified quarantine has significantly decreased, from 360 students on full quarantine on Aug. 30 to 34 on Nov. 1.
That said, Cali Calmécac Language Academy had “an unusually large (two) weeks,” when it came to students being placed on either full or partial quarantine, according to district COVID administrator Pete Sullivan. District data from the weeks of Oct. 18 and Oct. 25 show Cali having 28 students and 25 students in full quarantine, respectively.
Sullivan noted that the district did experience its first case of in-school transmission, which caused a ripple of students being placed on both levels of quarantine.
“We do know that the case did come to us from student transmission outside of school and then brought to school and we ended up having seven cases in a single classroom at Cali, and then those spread,” he said, noting that the students on both quarantine and modified quarantine increased in other grades as a result, since students in the impacted class had siblings in other grades at the district.
The transmission at Cali first occurred at lunch when students were seated next to one another, Superintendent Jeremy Decker said.
Contact tracing and quarantine placement based on the previous guidelines were the drivers of the board’s Aug. 30 decision to implement outdoor masking at the TK-5 level — if they could prove that students spent limited time unmasked, the number of students being placed on full or modified quarantine would decrease.
“The guidance did change, though it changed quietly,” said Decker, discussing guidance from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) that recommends a “targeted approach to school-based contact tracing, specifically focusing on indoor environments where individuals spend significant amounts of time.”
Instead of the district using a method of contact tracing based on proving who hasn’t come into contact with someone who’s tested positive, it’s now the opposite, with state guidelines indicating the districts should contact trace and place students on modified quarantine based on who they can prove has come into contact with someone who’s tested positive for COVID-19.
If students are allowed to be unmasked outdoors, the schools will be required to contact trace for the time that students spend unmasked outdoors, a feat that Cali Calmécac Principal Sharon Ferrer said would be impossible at her school site, since young students often can’t remember who they played with at lunch.
The positives and negatives of keeping outdoor masking
Decker presented a list of positives and negatives associated with keeping the mask mandate. Positives include eliminating the need to contact trace for interactions made outside, decreasing the likelihood of COVID and seasonal flu transmission, decreasing anxiety for families who are afraid of student-to-student transmission, among others. Negatives of continuing the mandate include students being uncomfortable with wearing masks, the continued cost and waste associated with providing disposable masks and not allowing families and students a choice in wearing a mask, among others.
“The board could decide to give all of the families with students ages 5 to 11 the opportunity to be vaccinated and then potentially lift the mask mandate. At that point, the families who are nervous about having their children unmasked, it seems like … would feel like their kids are safe,” Decker suggested, acknowledging that district staff struggled to come up with guidance to the board on how to proceed.
At the beginning of the board’s deliberation, board Vice President Rich Carnation said that he believes the outdoor mask mandate should be removed, since district quarantine rates have decreased, noting that the original reason for implementing an outdoor mask mandate was an uptick in students put on full and modified quarantine.
But other district trustees overwhelmingly supported pushing the goalpost further to allow parents who want their young students to be vaccinated the time to do so.
“Right now, we don’t know what we know,” Trustee Bill Adams said. “I’m concerned because, as I understand it, our mandate now is elementary, TK and fives (fifth graders) and that’s the one sector of our population where as far as I know we’re just starting those vaccines.”
Trustee Eric Heitz echoed Adams’ sentiment, adding that he’s specifically concerned about what the holiday season might mean for COVID-19 transmission.
“In the past, we’ve had spikes like that prior to vaccines and prior to masking requirements at school. I just don’t want to go backward,” he said. “If we can get past the next month or two, maybe reevaluate at that point … I think that’s the best step at this point.”
Board President Stephanie Ahmad expressed frustration that public health guidance isn’t as clear as it should be. As a result, she said the board’s role in establishing COVID-related protocol gets complicated. While she agreed with Carnation’s desire for a return to unmasked normalcy, she said that, as a parent, she agreed with both Adams and Heitz.
“I think having a time period where anyone who is planning to get their kids vaccinated has the ability to do that before we remove masking outdoors is probably what I feel most comfortable with as a parent. Just knowing that that extra layer of protection will be there if a student decides to unmask at school,” Ahmad said, adding that she would also be open to removing the mask mandate if the unvaccinated case rate were lower.
Ferrer urged the board to continue its masking guidelines.
“To change it right now, when we’re on the cusp of vaccinations and we’re also going into the holiday season, I think would be irresponsible,” Ferrer said. “I think it would be very responsible of our district to wait until after the holidays to look at the data – I would say at least two to three weeks after the holidays to see what the data is showing.”
While the board ultimately decided to revisit its TK through five masking mandate in January, the issue will come back to the board in December to allow the board to determine what criteria to follow when making the decision at the beginning of 2022.
