By the time the 2020-21 school year ended, officials in the Ellsworth-Kanopolis-Geneseo School District thought they had turned a corner in the fight against COVID-19.
Fewer people were getting sick. The vaccines created to slow the spread of the virus worked.
Yet here the board was Monday night — once again talking about K-12 COVID guidelines.
The reason was contained in an update earlier in the day from the Ellsworth County Health Department. As of Aug. 9, the county had 13 active cases of COVID-19.
“We have gone from moderate last week to substantial as of this morning,” the department reported. “We have seen a dramatic increase in positive COVID cases over the past couple of weeks.”
USD 327 Superintendent Josh Lanning said district policy on hand washing, distancing and other health measures are in place. Monday night’s question involved face masks and whether the district should demand students wear them.
Board members answered by approving a hybrid mask motion — masks will be required when students are in school vehicles; they will be voluntary inside buildings.
“We are starting to see the number of active cases move in the wrong direction,” Lanning said. “I know people have talked to you about masks.”
Beyond safety, there also is a federal element to the mask debate. The Biden Administration has mandated masks on public transportation, which includes school buses. The superintendent has been told the state will not enforce the order; however, if any school district is caught and brought to the attention of federal officials, government dollars could disappear.
Lanning said the Ellsworth district could lose more than $1 million in federal funds if it is found in violation of the mandate.
As for remote learning, the superintendent said the school year will start as it normally does. State lawmakers have limited remote learning to not more than 40 hours per student.
Those need to be saved in case of a real need, Lanning said.
The good news for USD 327, Lanning said, is that enrollment projections put the district back to where it was a couple of years ago. It appears Ellsworth-Kanopolis-Geneseo will have between 631 and 635 students. State money usually is about a year behind with head counts, but “it’s still a good time to see those numbers going back up, for sure.”