School COVID-19 numbers improve dramatically

PALMER — Mat-Su Borough School District Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani presented a much more optimistic view of the COVID-19 impact on schools at the March 3 board meeting than he had during his update during the previous quarter.

After a return to requiring students to wear masks during vigorous physical activity, Trani was happy to present that 40 of the 46 schools in MSBSD had remained completely open for 90 percent of the school year or more.

“I’ve tried to do this at the end of every quarter and so I don’t know if you remember back, we’ve actually gotten better as the school year has gone on. We’ve gotten better at keeping schools open,” said Trani.

In total, 1,009 cases of COVID-19 have been tracked by the school district, which does not mean that all cases have been infectious within school buildings. Trani also proudly told the school board that nearly half of all MSBSD staff had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine and a large number of teachers were scheduled to receive their second dose of vaccination during Spring Break.

As required by the Alaska School Activities Association, all students are required to wear masks during athletic competition. The ASAA has scheduled the basketball state championships in the Mat-Su after already hosting hockey and cross-country skiing championships at the Menard Center in Wasilla and Government Peak Recreation Area in Hatcher Pass last month.

“It’s not convenient. I did do some looking into our data for the month where we had allowed masks to not be used during vigorous activity, 28 percent of all the cases were attributed to athletics. In the two weeks since we started mask wearing it’s down to about 12 percent of the cases are attributed to non mask wearing activities, so if you were at hockey you would’ve seen masks, cross country ski, basketball state championships are coming up. Out of district travel is up and running we had teams go play games in Fairbanks,” said Trani. “We are trying to return to normal. It’s with jerks and starts but it is getting more and more normal.”

Trani reiterated that the district plans to host summer school without mask requirements after all staff have had an opportunity to receive both doses of vaccination and build up immunity. Trani said that graduation ceremonies are being planned in-person at each MSBSD high school and that masks would likely not be required at those ceremonies.

“What we’re trying to do is get everyone vaccinated that wants to be vaccinated at the staff level as quickly as possible and allow those weeks after your final vaccination to take hold, then we can start modifying things like can parents come into the building. I mentioned before that there’s parents of young kids who have never been in their students’ classrooms. We want to be a reality by the end of the year if at all possible,” said Trani. “We relaxed those guidelines, we’re trying to get more and more back to normal and as long as the case count continues to drop we really anticipate that what’s going to keep happening.”