Graphic courtesy of Warren County School District The Warren County School District board approved a change to its “close contact scenarios and actions for students and staff” on Monday, making all of the scenarios the same. Close contacts will no longer be denied entry, unless they refuse to wear a mask.

The Warren County School District is working to find ways to keep kids in school.

“The more kiddoes we can get back in school the better off we are,” Superintendent Amy Stewart said Monday during a special meeting of the school board.

School board member Arthur Stewart described “keeping kids out of school” as the “COVID scourge.”

The district’s treatment of close contacts is now universal.

Regardless of whether the person the student was exposed to was wearing a mask or not, and regardless of whether or not the student is vaccinated, “the remedy will be the same,” Stewart said.

The district’s modified “close contact scenarios and actions for students and staff” document is the same across the board:

“Wear a mask indoors in public for 10 days following exposure or for seven days, then released with a documented negative test administered at a formal testing site or health care facility on day 5, 6, or 7.

Isolate for 10 days if test result if positive.”

There is an option included in the plan.

“We know that folks are adamantly opposed, in some cases, to wearing masks,” Stewart said.

Some families and students would prefer to not be in school than to have to wear a mask.

“In those cases, we would deny them entry,” she said.

Asked if there will have to be lists of students who have to wear masks that someone in the schools tracks every day, Stewart said that is already happening.

Keeping more contacts in school has the potential to lead to more positive cases. That is something the district has been tracking and will continue to track carefully.

“We’ve got to be able to manage it,” Stewart said. “We’ll keep a close eye on it. We don’t want to have to close our doors.”

So far, when the district has not been able to keep its doors open, it has not been because of sick students, Stewart said.

“We have not closed because of COVID” cases among students, she said. “We closed in the past either because we had to or because we ran out of big people.”