CHARLOTTESVILLE — With schools out for the summer, kids are getting a break from the classroom, but school administrators aren’t getting time off.
They already are hard at work on policies to put in place to protect against COVID-19 when students return to classrooms in the fall.
At this week’s meeting of the Eastern Hancock School Board, parents shared their opinions on the matter, and some have even started a petition asking the corporation to drop restrictions when students return.
Parents spoke both for and against the idea of continuing COVID-19 restrictions in the 2021-22 school year. In Gov. Eric Holcomb’s most recent executive order on the issue, he gave local school boards the task of developing back-to-school plans for their own students. Most state regulations on what schools are required to do to control COVID infections will no longer apply as of July 2.
“I know that people in the community have very strong feelings about these back-to-school plans, what measures should be in place and what should not be in place,” said outgoing EH Superintendent Dave Pfaff, who was hosting his last school board meeting before retiring.
The new superintendent, George Philhower, will take over on July 1. Pfaff said he, Philhower and the members of the board have been working together on the issue and plan to make the plan they come up with available on the district’s website in advance of the July board meeting so that community members can read it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet released its guidance for the 2021-22 school year, so states have come to different conclusions about their approach to ongoing restrictions. Some states, like New Jersey, plan to keep requiring masks at schools, while others, like Florida, have banned school districts from requiring them. Indiana is one of the states in the middle, where those decisions will be made at the local level.
The CDC’s most recent guidance on children, which applied to summer camps, said unvaccinated students should continue to wear masks indoors, while those who have been vaccinated do not need to wear them.
Members of the EH board indicated that they intend to forge their own path. Member Scott Johnson said he’s had many conversations over the phone and face-to-face about parents’ concerns.
“I haven’t had anybody that’s come to me and told me that they enjoy having to wear masks and having to go through contact tracing and all those things,” Johnson said. “No one has come to me and said that they like it. Lots of people have come to me and said that they’re tired of it. And I hear you; I’m tired of it.”
Johnson said he’s heard from many parents that they want the reopening of the next school year to look like it would have before the pandemic.
Board member Tammy Setergren said she has heard most often that parents and guardians are willing to do what it takes to continue in-person schooling, hopefully as close to normal as possible.
“The other piece I’ve heard is that we do love the fact that our kids at Eastern have been so safe,” Settergren said. “…So many people have said that we must have done something right this school year.”
EH parent Susan Collins, whose children include a 2020 graduate and two current students, spoke in favor of dropping restrictions.
“We would like our schools to return to a pre-COVID educational and extracurricular activity environment immediately,” she said. “We request that our children, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, in grades K through 12, as well as staff members, be given the choice whether or not to mask.”
Collins also asked the board to drop contact tracing and social distancing, which she said have been disruptive “educationally and emotionally.” After concluding her comments, Collins asked the parents in attendance to raise their hands if they agreed with her. The large majority of them did.
On her Facebook page, Collins posted a link to an online petition that asks the school corporation to drop mandatory masks, contact tracing, and “excessive quarantine times” for the upcoming school year. It also asks that vaccination “remain a CHOICE, with no discrimination towards those children who are not vaccinated.” Petitions with the same language directed toward the boards of Hancock County’s three other school corporations are also circulating.
The petition says the parents believe schools can practice COVID safety through cleaning and sanitation practices. But because COVID-19 is transmitted mainly through droplets in the air and not as easily by contact with surfaces, experts say that does not actually prevent the spread of the virus.
The petition website shows that 380 people had signed the petition as of the afternoon of Thursday, June 17. The petitions directed toward the boards of Greenfield-Central, Southern Hancock and Mt. Vernon schools have a total of 890 signatures.
Parent Philip Ebert, who is also the husband of an EH teacher, works in COVID research. He cautioned that the pandemic is not over and should not be treated like it is. He said there is a possibility of other variants of the virus, which may be more contagious, emerging.
“I worry that the fact that we are jumping in and saying, ‘we’ve got to say now that we’re not going to do this’ — let the science decide,” he said.