Low alert: Mat-Su schools set to open with no mask requirement

PALMER — After a lengthy summer break away from dealing with Mat-Su Borough School District business, the MSBSD School Board returned for their first meeting of the fall on Wednesday to discuss the COVID-19 mitigation plan for reopening schools to in-person instruction later this month. The district-wide mitigation plan had been published earlier this week by Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani, who shared survey results and other information on changes to the mitigation efforts throughout his report. Prior to Trani’s report, eight members of the public spoke on COVID-19 mitigation, and six were in favor of less restrictive measures.

“You’ve earned our respect,” said Assemblyman Rob Yundt. “Of all the concerns I’ve heard tonight, anything that leads to bullying or may lead to bullying if one child knows if another child is vaccinated or not that’s a major concern of mine.”

Many members of the public had concerns with the contact tracing process and the potential for mask requirements in specific schools or classrooms, as detailed in the mitigation plan. Others were in favor of more information regarding vaccinations.

“Covid outbreaks in schools are largely among adults and parents have a right to know how unprotected their school is and how prone it will be to school closures. Requiring that MSBSD staff report their vaccination status and publishing anonymized vaccination rates is legal. Numerous universities, businesses and government organizations go even further and require employee vaccination. I’m not requiring that, but I raise this point to illustrate that MSBSD would not be violating HIPAA, state or Federal law by requiring the reporting of vaccination status and publishing anonymized statistical data,” said Micah Fry. “On a personal note, we left Massachusetts because school closures were harming our children. These closures were driven by staff members undue fear of covid at the schools. When we moved here we were fortunate to find MSBSD remaining focused on the safety of its children. I find it ironic that a year later our family may be subject to additional school closures in MSBSD, not because of undue fear of covid but now of undue fear of the vaccine. Please give parents the ability to concretely determine MSBSD’s commitment to our students’ health and education.”

During his Superintendent’s report, Trani detailed the early enrollment totals for the district and provided responses to a survey on COVID-19 mitigation measures and concerns that parents had. The survey had approximately 1,200 participants, and 58 % of respondents listed communication from the schools as the top mitigation strategy employed by the school district, while enhanced cleaning measures were selected by 48 % of respondents.

“I think everybody is concerned that they would like school to go back to normal and that’s our marching orders this year. We are trying to keep school as safe as possible and make it as normal as possible this year. Other people were very concerned about low vaccination rates, we heard that in the room tonight,” said Trani. “We will still treat each school as its own community. We are going to start out with all of our communities, so all of our schools at low risk which means masks will not be required. They are always recommended and that’s an individual choice. In a medium risk situation masks may be required and there is no single metric that’s going to be able to decide this this is where the Health Advisory Team comes in working with our medical experts.”

Trani noted that individual building closures during the last school year were often caused by a large amount of staff that were quarantined due to contact tracing without enough substitute teachers to fill in. Trani said that he hopes that enough teachers have been vaccinated to prevent building closures due to staffing during this school year. The contact tracing process was aided by MSBSD school nurses, but ultimately fell on public health to determine who was and was not considered a close contact.

School Board Members Ryan Ponder and Jeff Taylor questioned the penalties for someone determined to be a close contact who breaks quarantine and enters a school.

“Just to clarify any person that would do that would also run the risk of shutting down the entire school by bringing it in and exposing more people to covid, so please don’t do that. If you’ve been told by the department of health to keep your kids home, please do that so we can keep the schools open,” said Member Jim Hart.

Of the responses to the survey that were provided under concerns, the top listed responses were masks, vaccines, closures, mitigation, class sizes, and normal. Taylor questioned if students who were vaccinated would receive communication from public health as to whether or not they would be a close contact in the event of a positive case in schools.

“School nurses have always had this ability to see somebody’s vaccination status and they are HIPAA compliant and HIPAA trained so that’s always been the case,” said Trani.

Ponder continued to question if the contact tracing process was discriminatory against those who had not received vaccinations.

“I’ll bring it back to board policy 0410 and just ensure that this is what we’re doing in our mitigation plan is that ‘the board shall promote programs which ensure, ensure that discriminatory practices are eliminated in all school district activities.’ So ensuring that that’s the case and I would love maybe two weeks from now or sooner to know this public health entity and what, who knighted them. Who deemed them and what authority, are these recommendations or are these mandates because there’s a big difference between the two,” said Ponder. “Let’s open them up and let the state mandate under their policing powers what should or shouldn’t be done.”

School Board President Ole Larson cut the questioning short, noting that the mitigation plan would likely change in response to needs that arise within the school district.

“Our district will not bully anybody, ridicule anybody or any teacher or student that wears a mask. That’s a choice,” said Larson.

The state of Alaska has had 385 people die due to COVID-19 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, and 73,584 total cases. There are 101 people currently hospitalized and 52.6 % of the state population has been fully vaccinated.

The Mat-Su had 35 new cases reported on August 3 with 12,210 cases and 1,738 hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. There have been 61 deaths of Mat-Su residents and nine people are currently hospitalized at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, accounting for 11 % of the population of patients at MSRMC. There are seven out of 14 Intensive Care Unit beds available.

Out of over 100,000 Mat-Su residents, 36.8 % have been fully vaccinated, and the seven-day test positivity is at seven percent.