New London drops mask mandate

MT. PLEASANT - The New London Community School District relaxed itsr mask policy - going from requiring masks in the district's buildings to only requiring masks in certain areas.

The newest addition to the New London return-to-learn advises that students in grades 4-12 will still be required to wear masks in non-socially distanced classrooms. They will no longer be required to wear masks in the hallway, gym or certain predesignated classrooms. Kindergarten through third grade will be given an option to wear masks in the classroom, but they will not be required.

On May 3 the district will move to optional mask wearing if the number of COVID-19 cases still look good, this decision will be made the week before.

This comes after a long period of good local data, including no positive COVID-19 cases among students and staff since Dec. 7. New London Superintendent Chad Wahls said that they are watching the data and making their decisions accordingly.

'I mean all year long we have used our local data meaning the data of our own kids to make decisions to either strengthen our mask policy or loosen it up,” he said.

Wahls said that recent staff vaccinations have added to the decision. Before the district decided to go forward with the decision they got feedback from staff. Some brought concern but with their recent vaccinations many trusted Wahls to lead them.

'We got some feedback from our staff before moving this direction. There were concerns and stuff, but I ask that they trust us as they have trusted us all along the year,” he said.

Wahls cautioned that they are still trying to ensure that kids are being safe at school with social distancing and other previously enacted mitigation tactics.

'We're still trying to be careful about how kids are socially distanced, so we're taking advantage of that, so that in the case that something would happen we don't want to be in the newspaper for 60-something kids quarantined,” he said.

Wahls also said that the district will be looking at the data and following it closely and will react to any situations.

'Just like when we entered the school year if for some reason something were to arise we would go back a different direction,” he said. 'Right now though we feel our data is really good, even the county data is really good, the number of vaccinations out there, I think for everybody we're moving in the right direction.”

Wahls added that they are keeping safety in mind and paying close attention.

'We continue to put the safety of our kids and everybody at first, and if there is a little bit of a setback we'll approach it and make the appropriate decision as the time comes,” Wahls said.

In the neighboring district, Mt. Pleasant Superintendent John Henriksen reaffirmed the district's position on masks. Due to Iowa Assessments, spring sports, and quarantining rules, the Mt. Pleasant district isn't going to change their masking policy for the foreseeable future.

'[Quarantine rules] haven't changed, and we don't want to lose a bunch of kids due to quarantine and that's what was happening early on this fall before they changed those protocols. We were losing 10, 12, 20 kids at a time. So we don't want to lose kids,” He said.

Although Henriksen mentioned that he hopes the board would consider moving to masks optional for elementary schools, after Iowa Assessments.

'Obviously we don't want to lose kids at any time, but also it's really important because we have Iowa Assessments that are coming up, and those are really important data points for the Department of Education and the state of Iowa, and they're really tough to make up,” He said.

'Once we finish with Iowa Assessments it might be interesting for the board to take a look again at the data where we can look at our elementaries and maybe revisit that idea for the elementary schools,” he added.

Henriksen cautioned that they couldn't change masking in the upper grades because he doesn't want to decimate spring sports.

'The other thing is I don't want to lose kids to quarantine that are participating in spring activities. You know I don't want to decimate the soccer team, the tennis team, or the track team with kids who are gone due to quarantine,” he said.

Henriksen mentioned that many colleagues are using this end-of-the-year change to signal how the fall classes will start so that districts don't have to field the question of masks all summer.