Schools once again have become a flashpoint of the pandemic, with the state Legislature forbidding mask mandates and some community members angry either that districts are being too lenient or too tough with their coronavirus-related precautions.
No vaccine is yet approved for children younger than 12, and without the ability to mandate masks, school districts do not have access to what health officials have called the two strongest protections against the spread of COVID-19.
Regardless, school is scheduled to start in the middle of the month, and the superintendents of the three Summit County school districts are preparing for students to arrive in a quickly changing health landscape.
“What I say today may not mean a hill of beans next week because of what changes might take place,” said Jerre Holmes, North Summit superintendent. He added that many of the lessons learned last year could be upended by the relatively new and more transmissible delta variant of the virus.
The three superintendents said they were working closely with the Summit County Health Department. Incoming Health Director Phil Bondurant said at a recent Board of Health meeting that he aims to work collaboratively with the districts as well as the County Council and county manager during this new stage of the pandemic.
The three districts are keeping in place many of the precautions from last school year, including maintaining records to aid contact tracing and thoroughly cleaning schools.
The most visible precaution, however, will be missing: Districts will not be allowed to mandate masks. A bill signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in May specifically forbids school districts from requiring masks to attend school, sporting events or extra-curricular activities.
The Summit County Attorney’s Office said that the public health officer and county manager lack the authority to order a mask mandate for public schools absent consent of the Utah State Board of Education.
Health officials have said there are not nearly enough COVID-19 cases in Summit County to warrant a mask mandate, something they attribute to the local vaccination rate, which is the best in the state.
Still, Park City Superintendent Jill Gildea said masks had once again become a focal point of the conversation about returning to school and that she’d received calls and messages from concerned community members on both sides of the issue.
To start the school year, the Park City School District will be “encouraging strongly” the use of masks, the South Summit School District will “encourage the use of quality masks” and in the North Summit School District, “masks will be optional.”
Gildea said the district will have masks available for students to borrow and that staff would model mask wearing.
“It’s going to take … parental choice,” Gildea said. “But hopefully that parental choice will be to provide that first level of protection.”
Holmes said that it would be challenging to require masks in North Summit this year, saying that people have become weary of the measure.
“The majority of our people want to move on,” Holmes said. “… For most of the students that I talk to (who contracted COVID-19), it was like a cold. For some, because we were testing to play, they didn’t ever receive anything other than they were told they were positive. The taste and smell thing probably hit kids bigger than anything. Because of that, that’s what would make it even more difficult this year to require masks, when we didn’t have a lot of illness.”
According to state law, schools would be required to institute a frequent testing program called “test to stay” if a school of fewer than 1,500 students reaches 30 active cases within 14 days.
Under that case threshold, Bondurant indicated the Health Department would work closely with schools to recommend precautions. Bondurant reiterated that the Health Department does not regulate what happens in classrooms.
When school started last year, with the vaccine still months away, it seemed only a matter of time before a COVID-19 outbreak would send students home once again.
But for the most part, the districts avoided that fate. Though some schools closed briefly, the districts managed to provide in-person instruction at the height of the pandemic without becoming a significant source of the spread of the virus, health officials have said.
In-person learning remains the goal, with superintendents indicating that students do better in schools.
Remote learning will remain an option for students who are quarantining or in isolation because of COVID-19. In Park City, Gildea said the district would work with parents who want to keep their children out of schools, though almost all students had returned to in-person learning by the end of last school year.
Holmes said that parents who don’t want their children to attend in-person classes could use a state online learning program. Students who are out temporarily because of quarantine or isolation would have access to the teachers and work their classmates were engaged in.
He added that fewer students would be sent home because of a positive COVID-19 test in a classroom.
“If a student is positive, that’s for sure, there won’t be any debate about that one. They’ll be sent home,” he said. “The difference is we won’t be quarantining 15-20 kids to go home with them.”
Gildea said that the district’s health protocols would be governed by a “COVID-19 disease plan” issued by the state. Similar plans exist for other illnesses like whooping cough.
As for cleaning measures, Gildea called the district’s precautions “layered mitigation,” where one set of precautions, like hourly hand-washing, reduces the risk of spreading the virus by a certain percentage, and another set, like wiping down frequently touched surfaces, reduces the risk further.
She said one of the most impactful, if less noticed, changes the district made last year was improving the schools’ air circulation systems. Instead of completely refreshing the air once per day, the air is circulated once per hour, and instead of changing the filters once or twice per year, they are changed every two or three weeks.
Gildea said the district’s energy costs had increased 17% and that the schools were chillier in the winter, but indicated the health effects were meaningful.
She and Holmes both said returning to school is different this year than last. Holmes said the motivations behind the
health precautions have evolved.
“We’re in a different mindset a little bit this year, because last year, we’ve got to do all these things until we get the vaccine,” he said. “… Last year, kids mask so that when they go home, they’re safer to go home. Now that we have the vaccine, some of the burden needs to be placed back on the home. If you chose to get the vaccine then this might be an easier thing to navigate, but if you chose not to, it’s your responsibility.”
Gildea said that this year might be more difficult because of the diversity of opinions about how to respond to the virus.
She indicated she hoped the disease would not take center stage this year.
“All the things we learned, we want to keep doing, but it’s just kind of running in the background, not necessarily in the forefront of what we do in school,” she said. “… It’s going to be an interesting year.”