With high COVID transmission, Mankato schools are rethinking safety protocols

With COVID-19 positivity rates on the rise again, Mankato public school officials are weighing whether to update its school safety guidelines to help stop the spread of the virus.

The district is considering a proposal to reinstate mandatory quarantines for students who are sick or are exposed to COVID — a plan that includes hiring additional teachers to facilitate remote learning as well as two negative COVID tests prior to returning to school.

While a final decision hasn’t been reached, the requirement is expected to go into effect following the new year.

Host Cathy Wurzer spoke with Mankato Area Public Schools Superintendent Paul Peterson about the plan.

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The following is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation. Listen to the full interview using the audio player above.

What's the COVID infection situation in Mankato schools right now?

Well, right now, we're not doing too hot. We started the school year with seeing about 30 cases per week. And last week, we saw well over 100. And just over the last three days: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we had over 80 cases. And so were we on our way up to 100 again this week, if not for today's snow day.

So we definitely have seen a steady rise over the last 10 weeks. And that's what's really prompted our medical community in the school district to be thinking maybe a little differently about how we enter into winter and the start of the calendar year.

What is the district's COVID protocol right now?

Right now we’re doing like a lot of school districts are. When students are sick, students are staying home with COVID, or with any other sort of COVID-like symptoms. But we're also doing contact tracing for students who are deemed as being a close contact, and then we're encouraging families to follow the Department of Health decision tree, which recommends quarantining for 10 to 14 days and get tested.

And as you said, unfortunately, our medical community here, our schools, our health offices are just not seeing the level of students and families doing that. And unfortunately, students are coming back to school too early. And lo and behold, a few days later, they're out again, with COVID. And they've now been in school, potentially infecting other kids. That’s what's really making us take a hard look at how we get on the other side of this.

Have officials had the chance to talk to some parents about why they’re sending kids back to school?

As you can imagine, it's for a wide range of reasons. We have plenty of people who say, “Look, I get it. But we've got jobs, and we've got responsibilities. And so my student doesn't seem sick. If they are sick, we'll certainly keep them home.”

But it's that asymptomatic element of COVID that is really complicating all of this. And then we certainly have a segment of our population who just — they're just done with COVID and are just wanting to kind of move on with their lives. And those students are showing up, and we're doing the best that we can with them. But unfortunately, like I said, those numbers are just moving in the wrong direction.

If you go back to a mandatory quarantine, do you have enough teachers to facilitate online learning?

No, we don't. And it would be inappropriate for us to ask our current teachers who are in the seat working in person to try to do any sort of hybrid like hope we all attempted last year. So if our school board is interested in pursuing this starting in January, we would be out into the market, looking for part-time teachers — people who maybe are looking for an extended contract to help those students. It would be for a short period of time.

But thankfully, quarantine can be as short as seven days with a negative test. Some students are out 10 to 14, but we're looking for online support. So if they would be required to be home, we weren't just having them sit down and lose academic time. We would be providing that learning support virtually.

Is there support on the school board for going back to mandatory quarantine?

We got a lot of good questions. We just spoke with our board about this on Monday night. I wanted to get this on their radar. Our COVID team meets weekly. Some of us are talking about these things every day with our medical community. This is something that is being strongly recommended for us to revise and adapt our plans based on — unfortunately — the transmission rates in our schools. And we're seeing in Mankato the test positivity rate is quite high — at 19 percent currently. And so the board asked some really good questions, and they’ll be asking questions over the next couple of weeks as we enter into the holidays and then ultimately make a decision.

When do you start your holiday break?

We start on Dec. 22. So we'll go to school a few days the week right before Christmas Eve, and then we'll take the 23 off, and then all that next week before we start classes again on Jan. 3.

When will a decision be made on mandatory quarantine — when the district comes back after break?

We hope to have a decision made well before that. Because we understand that if a school district like ours makes a decision like this, people are gonna need some lead time for care, especially for our youngest of students. That's why these decisions aren't made lightly. We know that it has a ripple effect not just in our schools, but with our kids and families at home. So, we'd like to be making a decision here in December so we give people enough time to make plans.

Listen to the full interview using the audio player above.