Camas County schools shut down, BCSD counts 4 cases in 2 weeks
By Eric Valentine
Blaine County School District trustees, embattled with the Catch-22 of reopening schools during a pandemic, opted Monday night to stick with their hybrid plan of part-time virtual learning, part-time in-person learning at least a bit longer.
The school board voted 3–1 with trustee Amber Larna dissenting to stay in so-called Plan B mode, citing Blaine County’s move from yellow to orange on the COVID risk map produced by Harvard’s Global Health Institute (GHI). Orange denotes “accelerated spread” of the disease where yellow denotes “community spread.” Neighboring Camas County slipped into red in recent days, denoting the area has reached a “tipping point” according to GHI metrics. Camas County school board has since shut down its schools until Oct. 5.
“This nonsense that Blaine County has reached herd immunity and we can now do whatever we want is just that, nonsense,” BCSD school board president Keith Roark said. “Two weeks ago we were feeling that we were on the verge of reopening the schools and now we sit here tonight with numbers that don’t justify that.”
Trustee Larna pressed her fellow trustees to consider opening some of the elementary schools that have had no cases of COVID so things could return to normal for at least some district families. Although the other trustees stated they were open to doing that sooner than later, they weren’t ready to commit to that right now.
“It’s clear that one-size-fits-all may not be the best answer,” Roark said, regarding the potential for keeping the middle and high schools on Plan B all first quarter but opening elementary schools for full-time in-person learning sooner.
How Bad Is It?
On the bright side, BCSD has only two students and two staff members who are confirmed COVID positive. On first blush, that seems manageable. But it doesn’t take into account two things:
1.Students and staff with symptoms who have to self-isolate, increasing the totals to 27 students and nine additional staff who are not in school.
2.The laborious contact tracing efforts put on human resources and nursing staff to locate which students and staff have been exposed to COVID.
“It sounds like we’re already at capacity and we’re just at four cases,” said Trustee Dan Turner after hearing BCSD’s Director of Special Programs Aaron Bronson and HR Director Brooke Marshall update the board on their contact tracing efforts.
On the table is the hiring of additional school nurses, but according to Bronson only one application had made its way to the district in recent days. Staff also explained to trustees that for every student who has to self-isolate at home, they still require teacher instruction. And, for every classroom teacher who has to teach from home, an adult is still required to supervise the in-person classroom.
Muddying the waters somewhat is the issue of which metrics are being used. As reported, BCSD opted for using the GHI numbers over South Central Public Health District’s number for a variety of reasons, namely timeliness. GHI numbers can be as much as two weeks more prompt in their reporting. For instance, the local health district’s dashboard still shows Blaine County in the green zone, denoting “minimal risk” but that has not been updated since Sept. 10. On Sept. 24, when the next update is due, colors could change.
BCSD Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes and all the trustees commended everyone’s effort to keep with mask-wearing, social distancing and hygiene. However, Holmes added this: “If the community does not do this outside of the schools, it does us no good.”
Holmes mentioned on a recent trip to Starbucks that she came across a table full of her middle schoolers without masks and not socially distanced.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Holmes said.