The Archuleta School District held its regular School Board meeting on Tuesday, August 10, but the length of the meeting was anything but ‘regular’. In fact, it was nearly 10pm by the time the Board member Bob Lynch moved to have the meeting adjourned.
Part of the problem — if we consider 4-hour meetings to be a problem — was masks.
Item E in the agenda was a discussion-only item:
Opening of School – COVID update
Superintendent LeBlanc-Esparza will lead a discussion on the opening of the 2021-2022 school year and what COVID guidelines the District will be following.
No Board decision was necessary, nor was a decision expected by the staff. But a lively audience of more than 50 people wanted to discuss the COVID mask controversy, with considerable passion… or else, listen to friends and neighbors passionately discuss that topic.
Appropriately enough, Board member Dana Wayward made a motion at the beginning of the meeting, to move Item E to the top of the agenda, so that the ardent public could hear Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza’s presentation before the floor was opened for public comment. The idea was to allow the public to understand the District’s current assumptions and plans, and thus address any misconceptions the public may have brought with them.
The Superintendent’s presentation basically fell on deaf ears, it seems. The audience had come to protest about masks, regardless of the District’s policy decisions.
Here are a few of the slides shared by Dr. Kym during her introductory presentation.
Many of the 1,174 cases tallied in Archuleta County occurred prior to January 2021, when people first began receiving their second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. We had a dramatic spike in confirmed infections between November 8 and December 13, 2020, then another in early January and one in mid-April. Since December, the number of daily positive tests has averaged about 3-5 per day. Neighboring La Plata County has reported about 45 deaths attributed to COVID-19, but Archuleta County has reported only 3 fatalities — partly due, perhaps, to the fact that serious cases are often transported out of the community for treatment.
As Dr. Kym noted during her presentation, the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) — the folks responsible for establishing state-wide regulations, and for distributing money to our public schools — has been working alongside the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to develop medical recommendations for schools. In March 2020, all Colorado schools were closed by the order of Governor Jared Polis, and students (and their teachers and parents) were introduced to the joys of ‘distance learning’. By September 2021, many Colorado schools had opened back up to in-person instruction, but students age 12 and older, and staff, were required to wear masks, and ‘cohorts’ were forbidden from mixing socially. By the end of the school year, however, masks and ‘social distancing’ had become optional in Archuleta County — at the three District schools and at Pagosa Peak Open School, the District-authorized charter school.
How about this year? Some maps are showing Archuleta County as having a high rate of new infections, compared to other US counties. But as Dr. Kym explained, the CDE wants kids to be in school.
“There were about 13 pages of guidance that got sent to us by CDPHE and CDE… but the thing that came out of it, mostly, was, number one, ‘We are recommending — we are not requiring — that, if you don’t have high incidence rates — more that 35 cases per 100,000 — and/or you don’t have more than 70% of your community vaccinated…’ and these were recommendations, not requirements… the same conditions that got recommended last spring, this year are being recommended, not required. But I think the overwhelming take-away, frankly, from CDE’s guidance, was that — at all costs — they want kids in school. In person. They said, ‘Do what you need to do, to keep kids in school.’ That was a really important take-away in this…”
Among the recent recommendations: social distancing is no longer ‘six feet’. It’s now ‘three feet’.
We might assume three key reasons for the CDE recommendation to keep kids in school. One, because kids are assumed to learn more in school than via Zoom. Two, parents need to go back to work, and fill the millions of unfilled job openings in America. And even more importantly, perhaps, we don’t want enrollment to drop the way it dropped last year, because Colorado schools are funded based on their number of enrolled students.
“Right now, there’s no evidence and no data telling us that we should do anything other than the way we ended up last year.” Which was, in-person classes, and masks optional.
So, how are school families and staff feeling about masks, this year? The District staff conducted a survey and, at the time of the Board meeting, had received responses from about 490 parents and about 100 staff.
As we note here, the Pagosa community doesn’t fit the ‘low-incidence rate’ levels proposed by CPDHE and CDE. Only about 50% of our adults are ‘fully vaccinated’. (Around 75% of District staff are fully vaccinated.) Less than 30% of children age 12 and older are vaccinated.
Our rate of new infections is, at the moment, much higher that 35 per 100,000. More like, 50 per 100,000.
But Dr. Kym and her staff wanted to know, ‘How is the community feeling about masks?’ If the policy is, ‘Everyone is free to choose’ what would the likely impact be on, say, enrollment?
Because let’s face it… there are two big issues here. Health, and per pupil revenue.
Here are two charts of survey results shared by Dr. Kym, with the Board and the packed audience:
The left-hand chart says: “For the last month of the 2020-21 school year, we left the decision to wear a mask up to individual families. Do you support that decision?” 81% of the responding parents said Yes.
The right-hand chart says: “For the last month of the 2020-21 school year, we left the decision to wear a mask up to individual families. Do you support that decision?” These were the responses from the staff, and 82% said Yes.
The next question asked about masking intentions, for the start of the 2021-22 school year. Are parents planning to send their kids to school with masks? 38% said Yes. 62% said No.
Is staff planning to wear masks at school? 24% said Yes. 76% said No.
Dr. Kym also addressed the question of mask-wearing on school buses. Currently, school buses are treated, by the federal government, as ‘public transit’ and masks are currently required on ‘public transit.’ Dr. Kym noted that discussions are ongoing at the federal level, to determine is school buses ought to be exempt from mask mandates — considering, perhaps, that the kids on the bus will probably not be wearing masks before of after the bus ride, and will be hanging out, unmasked, with their bus-mates. That’s a slightly different situation from what occurs in most ‘public transit’.
At the moment, it appears children will be required to wear masks if they choose to ride on school buses when school starts in September. (The school year has already started for Pagosa Peak Open School — the only District-authorized K-8 public charter school in Archuleta County. Doors opened there to in-person instruction on August 2, with masks optional for students and staff. This week, in response to a reported infection, the staff is now wearing masks.)
So, with those details in mind, let’s hear next from the packed audience at the August 10 School Board meeting… about mask-wearing and so on.