Peters Township School District amends health plan with regard to masks
NAATs: nucleic-acid amplification tests
An amendment to the Peters Township School District Health and Safety Plan loosens the masking requirement that was put into place prior to the start of the 2021-22 academic year.
By a 5-4 vote, the school board Tuesday approved one of two options presented for members’ consideration following a Jan. 10 board safety committee. The plan now states that, based on weekly updates to the Pennsylvania COVID-19 Early Warning Monitoring Dashboard:
- Masks are required indoors in all district facilities when Washington County is in the high level of community transmission.
- Masks are strongly recommended in the school setting when Washington County is in substantial to low levels of community transmission.
Voting for the selected option were Rolf Briegel, Jennifer Grossman, Shari Payne, Daniel Taylor and Thomas McMurray, board president.
The other board members – Minna Allison, Lisa Anderson, Rebecca Bowman and Ronald Dunleavy – favored an option that would have required masks in times of substantial or high levels of community transmission, and strongly recommend face coverings during moderate or low levels.
Transmission levels are based on new cases per 100,000 people and percentage of positive nucleic-acid amplification tests, detecting the presence of COVID-19, during the seven days preceding a dashboard update.
As has been the case for the past several months, numerous township residents attended the board meeting to speak in support of a policy that would allow parents or guardians to make decisions about their children wearing masks.
The board in June approved a version of the health and safety plan that made face coverings “optional unless mandated by order of the PA secretary of health, governor or other governing authority.” In August, though, the plan was amended to call for universal masking inside district facilities.”
As the plan now states, any weekly changes “in mask status will occur on the Wednesday immediately following the Monday update to the dashboard,” with relevant information displayed prominently on the district website and sent by email to the community, according to Superintendent Jeannine French.
The federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 requires health and safety plans for school districts and other “local education agencies” that receive Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding to help cover expenditures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Each LEA must create a health and safety plan that addresses how it will maintain the health and safety of students, educators and other staff, and which will serve as local guidelines for all instructional and non-instructional school activities during the period” covered by an ESSER grant. A further requirement is for the plans to be reviewed “at least every six months,” according to information provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
To be addressed in each plan is how the local education agency “will maintain the health and safety of students, educators and other staff and the extent to which it has adopted policies, and a description of any such policy on each of the following safety recommendations” that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention establishes, with the first item listed as “universal and correct wearing of face masks.”
At French’s request, school district solicitor Jocelyn Kramer provided information about the effective allocation of ESSER funding.
To be eligible for the federal money, districts must fill out forms that include details about their health and safety plans. According to Kramer, some districts have done so without a masking requirement.
“Even if you don’t have universal masking, as long as you fill out the form, the federal grant money has not been taken away from those districts,” she said.
According to the district, Peters Township received $97,338 in the first round of ESSER funding, $371,457 in the second and $752,399 in the latest.
In December, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down an order by Alison Beam, acting secretary of health, requiring face coverings to be worn in all school entities.
In response, the Department of Health issued a statement that reads in part, “School entities still possess the authority and are encouraged to require masks in their facilities as recommended by CDC.”
Kramer elucidated.
“What the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled is that the Department of Health exceeded its authority by trying to impose the universal mask mandate in schools, under a regulation that didn’t allow it,” she said. “But then they told them two ways that they could do it, which they declined to do and put it back on local school districts, telling them to do it.”