Students at Binford Elementary walking into school for the first day on Aug. 4.
(Alex Paul, WFIU/WTIU News)
The Monroe County Community School Corporation eliminated its previous COVID-19 metrics during Tuesday night's Board of Trustees meeting. The district used the system last year to determine if students were learning in-person or online.
The board adopted adopted a new policy that will evaluate schools and classrooms on an individual basis without the entire district switching back to online learning.
"The original metrics no longer accurately represent the risk of in-person schooling," said Board of Trustees member Erin Cooperman. "Efforts should be made to avoid closing schools unnecessarily and the emphasis should be on layered mitigation strategies to make in-person school safer."
The district’s COVID-19 Monitoring and Advisory Committee, formerly known as the Metrics Committee, will be making those calls.
Cooperman is one of the committee's members comprised of doctors from IU Health, local health officials and educators. She said last year’s metrics are outdated and needed to be replaced.
"When these metrics were designed, we didn’t have vaccines for everyone over 12. The professional organizations weren’t sort of speaking in unison about the importance of in-person learning."
Cooperman said the county's percent positivity rate, which was used as the main barometer for MCCSC's learning status, does not provide an accurate picture of the community's risk to COVID-19.
Committee members agreed the best strategy moving forward is to focus on positive cases within individual schools, and if necessary, individual classrooms.
MCCSC will listen to recommendations from the Monroe County Health Department when determining if a school or class needs to temporarily switch to online learning. The Monitoring and Advisory Committee will meet once a month, but has the ability to meet quickly in emergency situations to take action immediately.
"I know that things are always changing, but the vagueness does worry me a little bit," said Board of Trustees member Brandon Shurr.
Both Shurr and fellow board member April Hennessey are concerned the new policy doesn't address certain situations that could enhance the spread of COVID-19.
Hennessey said she questions whether the quarantine rules are specific enough when it comes to close contacts.
"Are siblings still allowed to go to school? If you have a sibling who is a close contact, are you then a close contact? I think these are things that parents still don’t have clarity on," said Hennessey.
The Indiana State Department of Health defines a close contact as anyone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes in a 24-hour period that starts from 48 hours before that person began feeling sick. MCCSC said it will be following those guidelines mapped out by the state.
Once it is decided that a student must quarantine, they may only return to school under three conditions:
Produce a negative PCR test (rapid test results not accepted)
Medical clearance stating a different diagnosis
Isolate for 10 days
Teachers and staff must adhere to the same protocols before returning to school. However, fully vaccinated students and staff without symptoms do not have to quarantine.
For students who are forced to quarantine, teachers are required to follow up with those students and provide work for them to complete the same day on Canvas, the district's online course management system.
"Our experience during the past school year and thus far this school year indicate that our mitigation measures are providing a low-risk environment for students in the classroom," said Cooperman. "Strategies should be continually reassessed as more is learned about the Delta variant and as local conditions change."
MCCSC officials said continuing to require masks and 3 feet of social distancing inside school buildings is a major element of creating that low-risk environment.
During Tuesday night's meeting, a group of parents were outraged over the mask mandate. One meeting attendee refused to wear a face covering when it was time for public comment.
Margaret Menge was escorted out of the MCCSC co-lab building by a school resource officer after she refused to wear a mask at Tuesday night's board meeting. (Ethan Burks, WFIU/WTIU News)
Menge's refusal spiked frustrations among the crowd, which led the board to take an unscheduled 15-minute recess to calm everyone down.
"We shouldn't have to put adults into timeout," said Board of Trustees president Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer. "I'm hoping that we can follow the rules and wear the masks and speak in-turn, so that we can have public comment."
After the meeting resumed, tensions quieted and board members proceeded with the agenda.
