One week into the school year, Marysville is experiencing COVID-related conundrums.
According to information released at a school board meeting Thursday night, Bunsold Middle School has seen surging numbers while an entire kindergarten class at Edgewood Elementary has been placed quarantine.
“It’s the first week of school and kindergarten students are still learning the parameters and operations of the classroom and there was no guarantee of three feet of distance that entire time and little mask wearing, so therefore the entire class is quarantined,” Superintendent Diane Allen told the board.
The Edgewood student will be learning remotely until the quarantine expires.
Coming into the school year, the district had only a handful of confirmed cases and quarantines. That number is now in the hundreds.
As of Thursday night, there were 25 confirmed cases of the virus among students and 243 students in quarantine. Thirty-one of those quarantined students remain in school under a mask mandate, because of either wearing a mask during the COVID contact or being vaccinated.
Bunsold appears to be the epicenter of the district’s issues with 11 confirmed cases and 123 quarantines. There are also two cases and nine quarantines among staff members.
At a meeting last week, the board set guidelines in place that if 6% of a building population was impacted by the virus for three consecutive days a mask mandate would be enacted for that facility. If the number goes beyond 10% a hybrid learning model would be considered.
“We’re not in good shape,” Allen said. “We have too many kids out of school, at Bunsold in particular.”
After starting the week below 6%, Bunsold’s numbers Thursday night put it at 12% COVID impact, but that number had dropped to 8.67% this morning. The board was told that 65 of the quarantine cases dropped from the total overnight, having been related to an Aug. 20 incident. District COVID numbers are updated on its website at 8 a.m., noon and 4 p.m. each day.
“Bunsold has been all over the place this week,” Allen said.
According to the policy approved last week, if Bunsold remains above 6% impact for another day, the mask mandate would be enacted. Allen said a communication was sent to Bunsold parents Thursday about the surging numbers and encouraging students to wear mask in school.
“It’s not mandated at this point because we haven’t kicked the trigger,” Allen said.
Allen said mandatory mask wearing would have had an impact on numbers of those in quarantine.
Currently if a student has COVID contact and is unmasked and unvaccinated they must quarantine at home for 14 days. If a student is vaccinated or has had COVID in the past 90 days the student can still attend school but must be masked for 14 days.
If a student is unvaccinated but masked, the distance of the contact is key. If the student was 3-6 feet away from the COVID patient, for at least 15 minutes, the student can remain in school, masked, for 14 days. If the contact was within 3 feet, the student must still quarantine at home.
“The mask does help you on that quarantine chart,” Allen said.
Allen said the rise in numbers has led to an uptick in mask wearing among students in the buildings. She added at 30 families have also chosen to be added to the virtual academy roles, opting to learn from home for the time being.
Allen also addressed social media buzz which wrongly assumed the meeting Thursday was called to vote on a mask mandate. In fact, the board has pledged to meet each Thursday to review COVID numbers in the district.