The Warren County School District has modified its health and safety plan again to keep in line with the latest COVID guidance.

District officials recognize the presence of, and general characteristics of the omicron variant, and are preparing to step down their defenses.

The plan “denies entry to less students,” Superintendent Amy Stewart said at Monday’s school board meeting.

The board approved a modification that would require those unvaccinated students who are exposed to COVID at home to stay out of school for five days. After that, those students could return to school if they are not symptomatic, but would have to wear a mask for five days. If they cannot wear “an appropriately-fitted” mask, they will be denied entry for those five days.

Vaccinated students in the same situation would have to wear a mask at school for 10 days – down to seven with a documented negative test “administered at a formal testing site or health care facility” from day five, six, or seven.

Those who are unable to wear an appropriately-fitted mask would be denied entry for 10 days – or seven with a documented negative test.

Covid

“If you’re a close contact at home, the odds of you getting sick are very high,” Stewart said. “I’m recommending this because we know… that these kids are going to get sick.”

The situation for students who are close contacts at school or in the community are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated students. Those start with being required to wear a mask at school – or be denied entry if unable – for 10 days. Students would be able to remove the masks after seven (or more) days with a documented negative test from day five, six, or seven.

Students who test positive are encouraged to isolate as much as possible at home. Those students will be denied entry for five days after the test. Students may return to school once they are not “not experiencing symptoms or symptoms are resolving, and are fever-free for 24 hours.” Those students would be required to wear a mask at school for five days – or be denied entry.

Students who are denied entry, whether because they have tested positive or because they are close contacts, are not the most significant issue related to keeping the district’s doors open, Stewart said.

“Our ability to stay open depends on our ability to have enough big people,” she said.

When there are not enough professionals in a building, that building would have to close. “Our typical absences would be 30 to 40,” she said. “Today it was 77.”

More than one-third of the district’s cafeteria workers were out on Monday, she said.

The board chose the above option over one that required unvaccinated students exposed at home to remain out of school for 10 days.

Board member Arthur Stewart recommended eliminating the policy of denying entry to students who are close contacts altogether.

“I would be inclined to pass a motion that says we do away with denied entry,” he said. “To bar students from school goes against everything that I stand for as a board member.”

“We’re at a point where omicron is not deadly in a way that (any previous strain of) COVID was,” Arthur Stewart said. “”If we called omicron the flu, we wouldn’t bar students entry.”

He said the district has reached a “benchmark” for “putting” that kind of policy “in the rearview mirror.”

“There’s a provision in the health code… students that are exhibiting symptoms are to be kept out of school unless the school nurse determines that they are not communicable,” Solicitor Chris Byham said. “That code provision indicates any student exhibiting those symptoms must be excluded… There’s no such requirement for asymptomatic students.”

“The unfortunate part (of the proposal is) it denies entry to students whether they are symptomatic or asymptomatic,” Arthur Stewart said. “Our policy doesn’t allow them to come to school.”

He also objected to the proposal’s distinction between vaccinated and unvaccinated students. “If you’re vaccinated, you get a pass, if you’re unvaccinated, you don’t get that pass,” he said.

We are up to 77-something staff out of our buildings,” board member Donna Zariczny said. “That shortage will affect whether students can be in the building.”

That factor should impact whether the district has a policy that denies entry or not, she said.

“If the number of adults that are out goes up, we’re going to have to shut a building. We don’t want that,” she said. “I don’t believe we’re at a point yet that we can eliminate them altogether.”

Superintendent Stewart said she was close to being ready to step down to recommending the elimination the practice of denying entry. “It might be one more meeting and I might be suggesting almost exactly what you’re saying,” she said.