Colby K-12 lifts district’s mask mandate

Students at the Colby School District are no longer required to wear masks in their classrooms, and there will no longer be individualized contact tracing in the school.

In a move that drew applause from some audience members Monday night, members of the Colby school board approved major revisions to the district’s COVID-19 guidelines including scaling back quarantine requirements, changing close contact notifications and lifting the mask requirement.

The guideline changes were prompted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) changing its COVID-19 quarantine recommendations to be five days.

Under the new requirements, students and staff who test positive will be required to isolate for five days following the test date.

On day six the students may return to school if they are symptom free and wear masks from day six through day 10.

“This is a significant change from what we have done in the past,” said superintendent Steve Kolden while presenting the draft guidelines to the board.

Kolden went on to review the recommended changes to contact tracing. He explained that in speaking with the Marathon County Health Department, he was told they do not want the contact tracing information anymore.

“Did they specify why?” asked board member David Decker, asking if it was because the health department was being overwhelmed.

Kolden said he feels it primarily had to do with the change to the shorter quarantine period. He explained that it would take a day to day and a half to get the contact tracing information to the health department which would then have to alert people who were close contacts with that contact first occurring on day four or five.

He said it doesn’t make sense to notify someone on day four or five that they should be quarantined and on day six have them back in school.

Since it is the county health department, and not the school which orders the quarantines, the impact of this will be to virtually eliminate quarantines due to close contact for Marathon County.

“I don’t think you should hold Clark County students to a higher standard than Marathon County,” Kolden said suggesting that the same guidelines be in place for all students in the district.

In response to these changes, Kolden said he would prefer notifications to become more generic with parents getting a text message and alert saying something like, “a child in you son or daughter’s third grade classroom has tested positive.” It would then be up to the parents to decide if their child should be quarantined or not.

“That is what we do for lice or something like that,” said board member Teri Hanson. She cited a personal experience with the Clark County Health Department and said she does not think they are interested in getting close contact information either, noting for the work involved only to have the quarantine period so short it didn’t make sense to do it.

Board vice president Cheryl Ploeckelman agreed and cited experience with the Taylor County Health Department where she was told if you are positive, stay home.

Kolden said he felt the district still had a responsibility to notify parents since there are parents in the district who have concern about COVID-19. However, he supported doing it generically rather than specifically. He explained that in the high school, the alert would go out to parents in each class where a student who tested positive was in.

Kolden emphasized that those who tested positive would still be excluded from school for five days.

Board member David Decker said up until now he has supported having masks in the classroom. However, with the expansion of vaccination opportunities, he said everyone who wants them from age five and up has had a chance to get them.

“I am leaning away from requiring masks in the classroom,” Decker said calling for the mask language to be changed from requiring masks to recommending them and discontinuing contact tracing in the school.

Hanson supported ending the mask requirement citing numbers from area schools showing that despite Colby having masking in place since the beginning of the school year, they have had 140 confirmed cases from people in the school. By comparison she said Abbotsford reported a cumulative 76 positives in school and Stratford had 111.

Board member Eric Elmhorst asked about those who want or need to be protected due to being immune-compromised or having family members who are compromised.

“We need to protect those kids” He asked if it were possible to have N95 masks available for them.

Kolden said the district has already ordered N95 masks for staff and agreed with the idea of having them for students who were at risk or wanted them. Kolden said after the meeting that parents and students should contact the school office and that as soon as they arrive will be available for distribution in each of the school offices.

“We are going to spend less on N95s then on the kids who are taking three a day,” he said, noting there are some students who are currently throwing away masks multiple times a day. He said those who actively want to wear the masks will take more care with them.

In changing the guidelines to recommend, but not require, masks and eliminate contact tracing in favor of generic classroom-wide notifications of positive cases, Kolden said they would still need parents to inform the district if a child was out due to quarantine versus other medical reason. He said they are recorded differently.

Decker asked what happened if the CDC changes their guidelines again. He questioned if the district should be more generic in their guidelines so that they don’t have to revisit it every time the CDC changes recommendations.

“The parents have said they want us in charge,” Ploeckelman said, stating that if things changed with the CDC the school board could come back and have a discussion.

Other business

_ Board members gave their support to a hiring plan for the high school principal. The plan is patterned off of what was done when hiring the superintendent with finalists at a forum for commu- nity members and staff.

“I have never seen an open forum for a principal position,” Kolden said, suggesting that they instead gear it to primarily have staff have an opportunity to meet and talk to the finalists. The meeting would still be open to the public.

Ploeckelman agreed that the staff should have a chance to give input on the hiring and suggested including students in the process as well.

Kolden said they would reach out specifi cally to student council members to take part. He said those attending the forum would have the opportunity fill out a feedback form with the information going to the selection committee. The committee would then review the feedback and make a recommendation to the board of education for action at the March 21 school board meeting.

_ Board members approved the annual

administrative procedure setting limits on open enrollments.

Kolden said this allows the district some control if there is a huge number of high need students looking to enroll in the district. The limits were set at the same levels as last year.

_ Board members authorized Ploeckelman to vote her conscience as far as resolutions to be presented at the upcoming Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention. She is the district’s representative in the delegates. The resolutions direct the legislative lobbying efforts for the WASB.

_ Board members received notification of candidates who have filed to run for school board. Candidates will appear on the ballot in the following order: Teri Hanson, Lony Oestreich, Todd Schmidt, Cody Gumz and Tanya Geiger.