COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Coldwater Community Schools has posted a survey on the district’s website that asks parents which direction the district should take in regards to universal masking.
Any hopes school would get back to normal this fall have been dashed as the Delta variant has led to a big rise of COVID-19 cases over the last couple of months.
Superintendent Terry Ann Whelan say since the start of the school year, Coldwater Community Schools has had 55 students and staff test positive for COVID-19 and they have had to quarantine 773 students in the first five weeks of the school year.
The Branch-St. Joseph-Hillsdale Community Health Agency has adopted new guidelines from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services which would allow the district to keep students at school unless they test positive for COVID-19. But to implement these updated guidelines, Whelan says the district would need to adopt “universal masking”.
She says, “If all students and staff would wear masks, we would be able to keep close contacts, which were three feet or more from the positive person in school. Those individuals would just need to monitor themselves for any symptoms. If a student was closer than three feet from the positive person, they too would be able to remain in school and do daily testing for the first seven days. Our district is willing to get the test kits and train the people in testing protocols in order to keep our kids in school while at the same time keeping staff and students safe.”
The survey asks if the respondent was in favor of the proposed new guidelines that would allow students to stay in school unless they test positive for COVID-19, and the “universal masking” requirement needed to implement these guidelines or do they agree with what the district is doing right now, with no “universal masking” requirement but with the prospect of quarantining large numbers of students.
While there are disagreements on masks and vaccines, Whelan says, “I believe that the number one goal that we can all agree to is that we want to keep students and staff safe. I think our second goal that probably all of us can agree to as well is that we want to keep our kids in school. I don’t think anyone wants to have our kids go to back to Virtual Instruction again.”
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