Face masks now voluntary in Loyal school
The wearing of face masks in the Loyal Public Schools is now optional as the school district tries to return as much semblance of normality as it can in the final weeks of the 2020-21 school year.
By Board of Education action on April 21, students and staff may now be in classes and in the hallways without face coverings. The use of face masks has been mandatory for everyone in the schools since the start of the school year in September as the district made every attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It mostly succeeded, as the district had in-person classes full-time for the entire year, and had to shut down only one day in September due to COVID-19. Classes were cancelled on that Monday only because the school received a report of a positive test on a Sunday and did not have adequate time for contact tracing of others.
District Administrator Chris Lindner said the only place face mask wearing will remain mandatory is on school buses, and that is because of a government mandate that all bus riders continue to use them. Otherwise, students and staff will be asked to continue following all other past COVID-19 protocols, including social distancing and hand-washing routines. Also, all visitors to the school will be asked to follow the usual rules.
“All our other protocols have stayed the same,” Lindner said.
Lindner said he recommended to the Board a plan that would have called for students to be able to remove their masks when at their desks/stations in classrooms, but to put them back on when working in groups or in transition times in the hallways. The Board instead chose to make the face mask rule voluntary, and Lindner said that came in part because of a staff survey that showed teachers are OK with less restrictive mask rules.
Lindner said 70-75 percent of the district’s staff members had been double-vaccinated by April 22, and all those who wanted to had received their shots. The administration surveyed the staff and most said they agreed with a voluntary rule.
“They felt confident,” Lindner said of Board members’ decision to ease the restrictions. “I think the survey had a lot to do with it.”
The voluntary use took effect on April 22, and Lindner said only “a handful” of students and staff are still wearing masks.
“There are a lot of them that are glad to get it off,” he said.
The rule change comes as spring arrives and the school is planning numerous activities that had to be cancelled last year when COVID-19 first struck the area. The FFA banquet is set for May 3, the prom is to be held on May 8 at Rustic Occasions, and a mostly normal graduation ceremony is being planned for May 29. Also, spring sports contests began on Tuesday, and Lindner said there will be no limits on the number of spectators attending. “We have a lot of things going on in May as we’re trying to get things a little more back to normal,” Lindner said. “We felt confident. We’ll see where this goes.”
The last time Loyal had any students or staff members absent from school due to a COVID-19 case or close contact with someone who had it was about three weeks ago. There were off-and-on instances throughout the year when positive COVID-19 tests forced students and staff to quarantine for two weeks, and several times as one group returned, another would leave. The district never reached the point where it had to go to entirely virtual learning because too many students or staff were held out. The district did hold multiple virtual school days throughout the year, but those were designed to give staff members some extra time to complete double lesson plans and give attention to those students who did all virtual learning throughout the year. Lindner said 18-19 students chose to be all virtual early in the year, but that number has fallen to seven or eight now.
Lindner said the the face mask rule helped Loyal go to a full-time in-person class schedule while many other schools in the area used a hybrid model that had students attending only a few days a week.
“Other than that (the one day in September when classes were cancelled due to the contact tracing situation), we’ve been here,” Lindner said. “It’s been a very good thing for our teachers and our kids.”
