NCSD trustees approve optional masking, other pandemic safety guidelines

The decision comes as a more contagious variant of the novel coronavirus spreads nationwide, and while children under 12 years old still have not been approved to receive any currently available vaccine.

The guidelines make masks optional for all staff and students.

“That will not become a point of polarization or dissent,” associate superintendent Walt Wilcox told trustees. That point is reiterated in the district’s pandemic document, which states, “Students/staff will not be bullied or shamed for wearing a face-covering or not wearing a face covering.”

The guidelines also maintain expectations that schools are adequately sanitized and that students remain home when feeling ill. The document also says “NCSD will encourage social distancing of 3’ when possible,” as recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The latter organization is also urging schools to make face masks mandatory for all and recommends the three-foot distance only in concert with face masks.

In addition to the safety standards listed above, the district will maintain infrastructure to transition classrooms to virtual school if an outbreak were to occur. Wilcox added that program may be adapted for snow days as well.

The district’s guidelines apply “In the absence of federal, state, or local public health orders,” according to the document.

Information about COVID outbreaks in schools with still be communicated to the public, but it will be on a biweekly basis rather than the weekly schedule used last school year.

Several parents attended the meeting and thanked the board for keeping masks optional. Many of the comments echoed those made this spring, when parents were lobbying trustees to eliminate the mask requirement.

Several people made inaccurate statements about respiratory illnesses, claiming that they can’t be treated with vaccines. Influenza, pneumonia, whooping cough and tuberculosis are all respiratory illnesses for which vaccines exist, according to the American Lung Association.

Another resident worried about vaccine mandates and asked trustees to keep the COVID-19 inoculation optional for students as well. Public K-12 students in Wyoming are required to receive the following vaccines: diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis; hepatitis B; haemophilus influenzae type b; polio; measles, mumps, and rubella; pneumococcal; rotavirus; and varicella.

The state legislature’s Labor, Health and Social Services Committee in June advanced legislation that would allow students to apply for a waiver to opt-out of any vaccine mandate on “personal grounds.”

Several parents did raise the issue of student mental health, which they said was dramatically impacted during the last school year.

Masks are still required on district buses, which is a federal requirement. One parent suggested the district ignore that rule.

“Federal rules, we don’t have to follow that stuff in our county … who is gonna punish you?” the parent said.

The discussion came on the heels of Gov. Mark Gordon’s announcement Thursday that he would not mandate masks in public schools. Rather, the state will defer to local officials for those decisions.

When asked if the state health officer or any other epidemiologists were consulted in Gordon’s decision-making, spokesperson Michael Pearlman responded, “This was the governor’s decision.”

Gordon’s announcement added that his office will work with the state health and education departments, and that “we need to follow and respect the science.”

The question of whether masks should be required in K-12 schools ignited a number of debates last spring across the state, including in Natrona County, where parents at the end of last school year protested school board meetings calling for the mandate’s removal. Those efforts succeeded about a month before the academic year ended — after several trustees and district administrators met behind closed doors about the issue.

During the protests, which occurred as cases were plummeting in the state and as vaccines became widely available, several parents worried that if the mask mandate wasn’t eliminated before summer it would carry over into the next fall. That hasn’t been the case.

Now, cases are rising again. The number of total active cases in Wyoming now exceeds 1,300 — the most since January. Despite the vaccine’s availability, fewer than 40% of the state’s eligible population has been fully inoculated. When looking only at 12 to 17-year-olds, that number falls to under 15%.