By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph public schools have reinstated a mask mandate, of sorts.
This time, the district has decided to apply the mandate building by building with only those buildings with a high number of students out due to COVID-19 enforcing a mask mandate.
Assistant Superintendent Gabe Edgar says the district realizes some St. Joseph residents strongly oppose mask mandates, but the school board needs to do what it thinks is best for the students.
“We’re trying to educate kids. We’re trying to keep kids in the classroom,” Edgar tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “St. Joseph public school district has an issue with attendance anyway without even having quarantines and those types of things. So, we’re fighting a lot of these things. It’s almost hitting us in the face twice.”
The St. Joseph school board has a subcommittee that reviews COVID-19 data and advises the full board on what might be the best policy to keep the coronavirus from spreading.
The board voted in late October to drop the district-wide mask mandate on a 5-2 vote. It voted 5-2 Monday night to reinstate a mask mandate, but only in buildings that register a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Buildings will require students, teachers, and staff to wear masks if the number of positive cases, plus students out due to quarantine reaches 7%.
Witham, a member of the subcommittee, says the group attempted to bridge the divide between those opposed to mask mandates and those in favor.
“We felt like going building-by-building it would tackle where we’re seeing spikes in specific buildings versus just masking everybody,” Witham says. “We’ve got buildings that aren’t having issues, where vaccination rates among students are a little bit higher.”
Witham says the group discovered a startling statistic when reviewing cases numbers after the board dropped the district-wide mask mandate in late October.
“The sub-committee took the week that we dropped the masks district-wide as our base line and then collected data for three weeks straight and the number of quarantines district-wide roughly tripled,” according to Witham.
Witham says data taken over the last three weeks indicates that three of the district’s 24 buildings would have required masks under the new board policy.
The St. Joseph School District has approximately 10,500 students.