MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Kansas health officials warned of a “dangerous moment” as one school district reimposed masks and another eased up on them during a meeting so contentious that the audience was removed.
In the Manhattan-Ogden district, the school board voted Monday to reinstate a districtwide mask mandate, changing a policy that had been in place since Nov. 1 that made masks optional for high schoolers. The board will revisit the decision early next month.
Meanwhile, the board for the 27,000-student Shawnee Mission school district narrowly voted to allow a mask-optional policy to take effect for middle- and high-schoolers when classes resume today. The crowd interrupted so frequently that the board president twice shut the meeting down before kicking out the audience.
Superintendent Michelle Hubbard described the contentiousness of the meeting in a briefing Tuesday as “disappointing, to say the least” and noted that the board has been under tremendous pressure.
Hubbard said the district started the academic year 250 employees short and has struggled to find enough bus drivers, food service workers and substitute teachers. The situation is expected to get worse as omicron takes hold, she said.
“It’ll be all hands on deck for the next month,” she said. “There are times when the people at the district office have to roll up their sleeves and support our teachers so that they can support kids in the classroom.”
She noted that the district’s policy allows the district to require masks if case numbers and quarantines in a school surpass 3%.
The board’s vote came after more than 200 local health professionals sent a letter asking Johnson County commissioners and school districts to keep in place a mask mandate. Commissioners in Johnson County, which is the state’s most populous, are prepared to decide Thursday whether to scrap their mandate for elementary schoolchildren.
The letter noted that the U.S. has been “shattering” case records and said, “Now is not the time to let our guard down.”
The University of Kansas Health System in Kansas City, Kansas, is treating 120 COVID-19 patients, up from 40 on Dec. 1. Fifteen patients — all unvaccinated — are on ventilators.
“This is a dangerous moment for us,” said Dr. Steve Stites, the hospital’s chief medical officer, during a briefing Tuesday.
“There are a lot of kids who aren’t vaccinated. There are a lot of teachers who may not be vaccinated. And the problem is going to be that if you have too many kids out of the classroom, if you have too many teachers who can’t teach and not enough administrators, you can’t run the program. You’re going to struggle.”
