Mount Vernon schools no longer have a mask mandate.
The school board voted unanimously at its meeting Monday, Feb. 7, to lift the mandate in the schools and remove it from the district’s Return to Learn Plan.
Instead, the plan will state that mask wearing will be strongly recommended if two percent or more students are testing positive for COVID-19 and eight percent or more students are absent due to illness in a school for three consecutive days.
As of Feb. 4, Mount Vernon’s schools have never met these conditions.
The federal mask mandate remains in place on school buses.
The school board also specified criteria for letting community people back into the schools. Visiting in the schools is now contingent on low levels of COVID-19 and absence in the schools, and the number of COVID cases in Mount Vernon being on a downward trend for three weeks.
Reasons for the changes
The schools have been seeing a downturn in numbers of COVID-19 cases, said Superintendent Greg Batenhorst at the meeting.
On Feb. 7, for example, the schools had only six students positive with COVID-19—five in the elementary school and one in the high school. The middle school had no cases.
These numbers were down from nine students in the three schools positive for COVID on Jan. 7, 29 on Jan. 14, 31 on Jan. 21, and 34 on Jan. 28. Then on Feb. 4 only the elementary school and the middle school had any COVID cases, for a total of 22. By Feb. 7 the number of positive cases had declined to just the six in the elementary school and the high school.
In addition, the district has never met the criteria that its Return to Learn Plan specifies would be needed for in-person learning to be shut down at a school: three consecutive days with the percentage of COVID cases at or above two percent, and illnesses at or above eight percent.
Furthermore, Batenhorst said he doesn’t think the district will ever meet those criteria. The district has had only five times this year when a school building had two percent of its students positive for COVID (Jan. 12 and 21 at the elementary school, and Jan. 21, 24 and 25 at the middle school), and the district has not reached eight percent of students out with illness in a building since Jan. 3.
Since it is unlikely the district would ever meet the metrics needed to shut down in-person learning, having a mask mandate is a moot point, said Batenhorst.
Furthermore, a mask mandate isn’t seen as lawful at this time, since the courts have said schools can’t have one.
There were more compelling reasons for mandating masks during the early days of COVID and while the Delta variant was widespread, but not so compelling with the Omicron variant, Batenhorst said. In addition, many school districts across the country are starting to drop their mandates.
For all these reasons, Batenhorst recommended the district drop the mask language from its Return to Learn Plan.
In addition, since the number of active COVID cases in Mount Vernon is continuing to rise and visitors could bring COVID into the schools, Batenhorst also recommended setting three criteria for letting community people come back into the schools, except during lunch time since students who prefer to be masked can’t do so while eating lunch.
The new criteria for community people to enter the schools are: (1) less than two percent of students are testing positive for COVID-19, (2) less than eight percent of students are absent due to illness, and (3) the number of COVID cases in Mount Vernon is on a downward trend for three weeks.
The school board agreed with Batenhorst’s recommendations and unanimously approved deleting a mask mandate from the district’s Return to Learn Plan and replacing it with a mask recommendation if the two specific conditions occur simultaneously, and also approved new criteria for community people to enter the schools.