Mt. Pleasant keeping masks for rest of school year

The Mt. Pleasant school board agreed Monday that the district will continue to wear masks for the rest of the 2020-21 school year.

'You know I'm not a mask fan, but …,” board member Chuck Andrew said. 'We entered the school year with masks, and I believe that it's helpful.

'The students are used to masks, maybe not that they're used to them but they know it's the norm now,” he said. 'My thoughts are that we should just finish the year out with them.”

Superintendent John Henriksen had been getting a number of inquiries from the public about the masking requirements for the district.

'With the governor's relaxing of the statewide mandate, there have been questions of if and when we are going to relax our masking requirements,” Henriksen said. 'It's important to consider these things as we go forward.”

Henriksen pointed out the fact that COVID-19 close contact protocols haven't changed.

'If you were exposed to someone who tested positive, and you both were wearing a mask, you don't have to quarantine,” he said. 'However, if one of the parties isn't wearing a mask, then you do have to quarantine. That's important to remember, because we don't want to lose big bunches of students as we go forward.”

Henriksen also brought up the fact that the school staff will have the opportunity to receive their second vaccination dose on March 26. Even though the vaccination protects the individual from the virus, the new CDC protocols for vaccinated individuals still calls for social distancing and masks in the presence of unvaccinated individuals.

'We're heading into the spring activity season, and last year, we weren't able to have it due to COVID,” Henriksen said. 'I would hate to jeopardize our kids or our teams by losing big bunches of students through the activity season.”

It is a critical time for the schools with the upcoming performance tests.

'With the ISASP tests, 80 percent of our Iowa Schools Performance profile is based on these tests,” Henriksen said. 'We need 95 percent participation, and if we start losing a lot of kids at once due to COVID, it'll be really hard to make it all up.”

School board member Martha Wiley voiced her support of keeping masks for the rest of the school year.

'My hope is that we'll have a good summer, and that maybe, we'll be able to step into the school in the fall without them,” she said. 'It would be awful if we loosened up and then realized it was the worst mistake and have to go back to the way it was. I think we best stay the course, keep it up, and move forward to next year.”