Saline Area Schools To End Mask Mandates

Saline Area Schools will lift its mandatory mask mandate as of February 28. This was announced at an at-times contentious meeting of the Board of Education when it met at Saline Middle School, February 22. Mask usage is still “highly recommended,” in lockstep with the Washtenaw County Health Department, and masks will remain available in school buildings.

“The Washtenaw County Health Department has talked about how they have conditions changing enough in their opinion that it has been rescinded as of February 28. … We are in a different place now. We can offer greater flexibility in the way we can continue to provide guidance. Referring to the Michigan department of Health and Human Services, the conversation is that based on current conditions, the department is expiring the current health advisory on masking in public settings, which includes schools,” Superintendent Steve Laatsch told parents in the Saline Middle School auditorium. “Saline Area Schools will follow public health guidance and effective February 28 masks will be ‘highly recommended’ for students, staff and community members in Saline Area Schools.”

Applause broke out among some parents.

Laatsch has done this as part of his pledge to follow the advice of the WCHD – instituting mandatory masking last August per WCHD guidelines, and is now following the same department’s guidelines to no longer mask. Laatsch did emphasize repeatedly that it will remain a possibility for the mask mandate to return if the Covid case numbers – which are currently nosediving – return with a new wave.

“Washtenaw County Health Department will lift its remaining COVID-19 health orders in K-12 educational settings effective Feb 28. This includes two orders, one requiring masks, and another for isolation and quarantine. Since these orders were issued, pandemic conditions have changed considerably. Universal masking remains strongly recommended in K-12 educational settings and provides an additional layer of protection, especially when high-quality masks are used consistently in indoor settings,” The Washtenaw County Health Department wrote in a press release.

The mixed reaction among parents varied greatly. Some parents who were against the mask mandate questioned the science, accused the Board of not following the constitution and multiple parents suggested a lawsuit against Saline Area Schools if the mandate was not lifted. One parent even suggested setting up a charter school as an alternative to Saline. These parents, and their supporters, cheered when Laatsch announced that Saline would end mandatory masking on February 28.

“When you chose to wear masks, I chose to keep my kids home because I don’t want my kids masked. At this point the parents who are too scared because other kids are not masked, even though their kids are vaccinated and their kids are masked, let them make the same choice. You can choose to send kids to the environment you are told they are going to be at, or you home school or switch your kids out and do the same thing that I had to choose,” parent Raelyn Davis told the Board of Education. Davis added that the district “said that 200 students have left Saline in the last two or three years since you have had a group of parents who have said ‘we don’t feel represented. We don’t feel you are making choices where we can feel heard half the time.’ I can personally name 40 students who still live in the district and don’t [go to SAS]. We need to find a way to have us feel listened to and be able to combine this and not just poke the stick with the fire and say ‘who cares?’ More people will leave. Do the right thing. Don’t look at your own biases, but do what the community wants and has expressed.”

But there were also parents who did not support ending the student masking mandate. Parents against ending the policy covered concerns about the lingering pandemic, the possibility of another variant and the equity of having some students mask and some not.

“While I had hoped the district would continue mandatory masking until the cases fell further in the county, I thought Dr. Laasch’s commentary was reassuring. It is important for the community to understand we will have to consider differences in mitigation strategies based on the most current data and I think the superintendent made that very clear,” parent Lauren Gold told the Sun Times News via email. “I hope that cases will continue to fall before Monday and that we will not see an uptick of COVID-19 after Monday’s change. I anticipate that there will be a flood of students with other respiratory illnesses that will impact their ability to be in school and I hope we have adequate resources for testing. I am also quite worried about medically fragile and immunocompromised children and their ability to go to school safely. While I understand that we cannot get to a time of zero risk, I sincerely had hoped we might wait until the cases further. Every pediatrician parent that I reached out to in the district concurred.”

Trustee Jenny Miller said she was concerned that students who mask and those who don’t could be treated unequally, especially if immunocompromised students are forced to be in a situation where not everyone wears masks.

Laatsch reiterated the district would pursue a no tolerance policy regarding bullying over mask usage; whether a student continues to mask or not.

“Unfortunately, we have a divided community (and divided County) as it relates to the rescinding of the mask order. It is a difficult decision to make, but at the end of the day, we have been relying WCHD guidelines to help us navigate this Pandemic and will continue to do so,” Laatsch told this newspaper by email, Thursday. “The WCHD has stated that they are rescinding the mask mandate in school effective Feb. 28th. They also have said that they highly recommend masking to continue in indoor spaces in schools. Therefore, SAS will follow this guidance.”

The omicron variant that has dominated the pandemic lately shot up like a rocket earlier this winter, but is now crashing just as quickly as it went up. There are four categories for community transmission – high, severe, moderate and low. Previous policy was that the schools would remain masked unless community transition in Washtenaw County went below high or severe. While Washtenaw County remains high at the moment, the current downward trajectory in the infection rates has been so dramatic that this has led to this change in policy.

“Local health orders have been necessary during the pandemic, and these orders have helped
protect in-person learning, critical health care capacity, and overall health,” says Jimena Loveluck, MSW, health officer with Washtenaw County Health Department said in the press release. “We are in a different place now. We can offer more flexibility while we continue to provide appropriate guidance and work with our local schools to protect health, prevent spread, and maintain in-person learning as safely as possible.”

Image Credit: Scot Graden, former Saline Area Schools superintendent.