Colby K-12 maintains masks in district

By Kevin O’Brien

Masks will continue to be mandatory inside Colby classrooms after a majority of the school board blocked three attempts to loosen the requirement at a meeting last Thursday Board members kept the mask mandate in place after hearing from a group of high school students who said they are willing to keep wearing masks if it means they can avoid more quarantines and stay in school as much as possible.

“With so much on the line this year, I think it’s just worth it to keep our masks on,” said junior football player Mateo Lopez. “I know everybody that plays sports and does everything in school is willing to keep their masks on.”

The board rejected a four-level plan developed by superintendent Steve Kolden, which would have made masks recommended rather than mandatory if the percentage of positive COVID cases and close contacts drops below 6 percent at any of the three school buildings. Based on current COVID numbers, none of the buildings would have a mask mandate under that plan.

See MASKS/ Page 7 Kolden’s plan was to consider each school building separately. If more than 6 percent of the student population in any building tested positive for COVID or was deemed a close contact, then masks would be required in classrooms, as they are now, in that building. If that number exceeded 12 percent, masks would become mandatory in all school settings, not just classrooms.

In level four of Kolden’s plan, which would take effect if over 18 percent of the building’s population was COVID positive or a close contact, all classes would be taught online.

A motion to approve Kolden’s fourlevel plan failed, with the only yes votes coming from board members Cheryl Ploeckelman and Teri Hanson. Board member Todd Schmidt made a motion to enact the plan as of Monday, Nov. 29, but that failed on a 3-4 vote, with Ploeckelman and Jean Schmitt joining Schmidt in voting yes.

Board member Dave Decker, who voted against both motions, said he wanted to wait on implementing the changes until the district had a more solid virtual learning program in place and a vaccine is available for kids as young as five.

“I do think it’s a good plan,” he said. “I just don’t know that I am ready yet.”

Board member Teri Hanson made a motion to give Kolden the authority to make masks optional, as currently recommended by the CDC, but that motion died due to lack of a second.

Hanson said the current policy doesn’t make a lot of sense to her, since students are unmasked for large portions of the day and other local districts have lower COVID numbers even though masks are optional.

“When I see other schools that are in a 15 to 20-mile radius of us that seem to be functioning at a far better level than we are, that sticks in my mind,” she said.

A group of about 20 students, all wearing masks, showed up to last Thursday’s meeting to express their support for keeping the mask mandate in place. When parent Travis Boyer asked the students to stand if they were willing to keep wearing the masks in order to stay in school, they all stood in unison.

“Let’s keep these kids in school and in sports,” Boyer told the board.

Boyer was one of several speakers who spoke in favor of keeping masks mandatory in classrooms.

“By keeping it the way it is, it’ll keep the kids in school, keep them learning,” he said. “It cannot work if only certain kids wear masks.”

Parent Amanda Haupt thanked the board for instituting the mask mandate at the previous meeting and urged members to keep it in place as a way of preventing another round of COVID cases and quarantines.

“We need to keep our children in school as much possible,” she said. “None of us like to do teaching at home.”

With the football team now entering playoffs, Haupt said she could foresee another situation in which the quarantining of players would rip the community apart.

“I desperately encourage you, for the sake of our community as a whole, for the sake of our school community has a whole, to continue to enforce a mask mandate,” she said.

Senior Brayden Boyer said his sophomore and junior years were already negatively affected by COVID, and he doesn’t want to see that happen to his last year in school.

When he was forced to do online learning last year, Boyer said his GPA dropped drastically, simply because he found it hard to stay on task and get his work done at home.

“I think it’s really hard to expect us to do as well as we would at school,” he said. “That’s why we need to stay in school.”

Junior Mateo Lopez said he was quarantined for two months straight last school year, and it was the hardest academic period he had gone through in his life.

“I had straight Fs and Ds, and it was hard to keep up when there’s just so much else going on,” he said. “Missing football was hard, and it was hard to stay focused on everything.”

Several speakers, however, were critical of the mask mandate, questioning why Colby is the only district in the area with one in place.

Parent Dave Smith listed off a number of other districts in the area, including Edgar, Stratford, Abbotsford, Owen-Withee and Loyal, that have 10 or fewer COVID cases and no mask mandate in place. He wondered how these districts could “get away” without a mandate and still have fewer cases than Colby.

“My question to the board would be, if you knew those numbers -- and I’m sure you probably do -- why are we masking?” he said.

Parent Jessica Lieders said the current masking policy “makes no sense.”

“Masks are only worn in the the classrooms, not in the halls, locker rooms, lunch rooms or anywhere else the kids socialize in or outside of school...” she said. “Do any of us really believe that COVID can only be transmitted in the classroom?”

Lieders wondered why Colby adheres to policies that other districts in the county do not. He urged the board to give parents the power to decide whether their kids wear masks or not.

“By keeping the masking policy, no one has a choice,” she said. “You are taking away every single person’s right to have a say, whether they are for or against it. By honoring parental choice, you are giving each and every parent and student that choice and ending this debate.”

Parent Jessica Ertl questioned why certain parents were granted religious exemptions to the mask mandate while others were not and criticized the whole notion of only requiring masks in classrooms.

“What happens when kids go to their lockers? They’re shoulder to shoulder, right on top of each other, but yet in the classroom, they’re further apart,” she said. “That does not make any sense. That does not measure up.”

Ertl also challenged the students who stood up for the mask mandate, asking them to stand up if they also signed a petition last May to get rid of the mandate in place at that time.

“I know darn well some of you did,” she said.

Board discussion

Kolden explained his rationale for creating a policy that considers each school building separately and only implements mask mandates when COVID numbers rise above certain levels.

“As I watched our numbers drop, and people are still masking, I questioned myself: ‘Do we still need to be wearing a mask?’” Kolden said.

When asked about students from different school buildings passing each other in the hallways, Kolden said the exposure would not likely equate to 15 minutes, which is the threshold for being considered a “close contact” under quarantine rules.

Each school’s masking rules would be determined on a weekly basis, so the district won’t have to wait a month until the next board meeting to make changes, Kolden noted.

“Quite honestly, with COVID, a lot happens in a week,” he said.

Board president Bill Tesmer asked Kolden what the district can do about students who show up to school even though they have been quarantined. This happened in September, when about two-thirds of 240 quarantined students showed up for school anyway. “If they’re quarantined, even if they’re asymptomatic, they shouldn’t be here,” Tesmer said. “But we have community members that are still sending their students to school who don’t believe in that.”

Kolden said the district has a responsibility to uphold any quarantine issued by the county health department.

“If a child shows up, we’re going to call the parent and ask them to come get their kid,” he said. “If they refuse, then they kind of push us.”

Ultimately, the district could suspend a student for violating the district’s rules, which would be “ugly,” Kolden said.

“I don’t want to have a debate with any of these parents and say ‘OK, I’m going to kick your kid out of school because they’re coming,” he said. “It’s not going to be very pleasant.”