LOWER POTTSGROVE — With a 7-2 vote, the Pottsgrove School board Thursday night changed its COVID health and safety plan to make masks optional, but only if the number of cases drops into the “moderate” category.
Voting no were board Vice President Tina McIntyre and new board member Joe Vecchio.
Superintendent David Finnerty outlined the plan by noting that the goal is to “minimize the number of student days lost.”
Currently, if a student has symptoms, tests positive, has a COVID-19 case in their home, or is determined to have been a “close contact” with someone who is positive, they are quarantined at home for seven to 10 days.
“The number of lost student days continues to be significant,” said Finnerty. So far this year, that has happened 927 times, for a total of 4,433 student days lost, according to a chart he shared at the meeting.
However, those who are fully vaccinated, masked and three feet away, are not considered close contacts and do not have to be quarantined, according to the district policy.
“Unmasking eliminates the student mask and distance exception, and that’s been so powerful at keeping kids in school,” Finnerty said. Removing a mask requirement “will increase ‘close contacts’ and not by a little, by a lot.”
Almost all close contacts have come from buses, the cafeteria or athletics and activities, “none from the classroom” where the mask mandate is most in effect, Finnerty said.
The current policy requires everyone to wear masks.
Under the changes adopted Thursday night, through Feb. 22, 2022, whether or not masks are required will be based upon the “community spread” data published every Tuesday night by the Montgomery County Department of Health.
Current numbers will continue to require masks under the new policy.
In fact, for the entire school year, cases of COVID in the townships which comprise the district have been in either the “substantial” category — between 50 and 100 cases per 100,000; or the “high ” category — 100 or more per 100,000.
Should those numbers drop to the “moderate” category of 10 to 49 cases per 100,000 for two consecutive weeks, masks would become “recommended” but not required under the new policy.
The reverse would also be true should community spread rates rise. “The two-week time-frame works going up the ladder and going down the ladder,” Finnerty said.
But people should not get their hopes up too quickly.
Finnerty said he has consulted a number of experts who have told him “the numbers in the short term are going to get very significantly worse, that will track what has happened in other states.”
The good news is, those same experts are predicting numbers will come down sharply, after that, in January or February.
He also warned that the district will continue to be bound by the “whipsaw decisions” in the state courts. Gov. Tom Wolf’s mask mandate has been overturned, then re-instated while it is appealed to a higher court. It expires on Jan. 17.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen (in the courts), but if the mandate is reinstated, that will supersede” the new Pottsgrove policy, said Finnerty.
As is ever the case whenever the subject of masks is on the table, strong opinions on both sides of the question of masks’ efficacy to prevent the spread of the virus are sure to arise. Thursday was no exception.
On the board, School Board President Al Leach said he believes that parents should have the choice about whether to have their children masked, but said the current rules mean not allowing masking would have a negative impact on children being in school. “I can’t vote my way because it does not help our students,” he said.
McIntyre said she had a personal experience that has set her against allowing masks, but said she appreciated Finnerty’s patience and understanding in helping her work out her thoughts on the matter.
Vecchio said he felt that the board was being asked to act as medical professionals in deciding these matters when they should be dealing with education. “I don’t know where the county gets its numbers, so I question a lot of this.”
Resident Joe Duffany said Vecchio “lost all credibility with me” because of that statement. He pointed out the board votes on major building projects and repairs, but are not in the building trades; the board votes on contracts, but are not labor lawyers. “It’s about keeping the kids safe,” he said.
Resident Tiffany Schmidt urged the board to keep mandatory masking in place until all children have had time to get fully vaccinated and until the holidays have passed, which will likely cause a spike in cases.
“When is enough enough?” asked Becky Buzzbee. Identifying herself as a veteran who “fought for our freedoms,” she said, “kids have rights and we have to stand up for those rights.”
Resident Mark Milky said peer-reviewed science shows masks are 51 percent effective at blocking droplets, “that’s peer-reviewed science not your old college roommate on Facebook.”
Resident Paul Dreihaus supported the plan. “No single defense, including masks, is 100 percent effective.” What works, he said, is “defense in depth, including masks, vaccination, tests and quarantine.”
Frequent commenter Andy Korman urged the board and community to read the book “Plandemic: Fear Is the Virus. Truth Is the Cure,” which documents the popular video in which virologist Judy Mikovits makes a number of unsubstantiated claims. After her 2009 research linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a mouse retrovirus was discredited and retracted from Science, Mikovits was fired from her post as research director at Nevada’s Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease.
The magazine “Science fact-checked the video. None of these claims are true,” according to a May 2020 article in the magazine. “YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms have taken down the video because of inaccuracies.”
“You’ve been played,” Korman told the board. “The face diaper is like a petri dish for microbes.”
Former school board member Rick Rabinowitz thanked the board for its perseverance.
He said a heart attack and visit to the hospital gave him some insights about choice and people who chose not to wear a mask in public. “I do not get a choice if someone chooses to expose me to a deadly disease. Others don’t want to be exposed to my illnesses, so I choose to wear a mask.”
