Madison County school district to offer K-6 classrooms where masks are always worn
In the Triad school district this fall, there will be a few classrooms where all the students always wear face coverings to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.
In other classrooms, the students won’t have to wear a mask unless they have to work closer together on assignments or projects — or until virus transmission rates pick up across the community.
Whichever circumstances the students learn — always or sometimes masked — will depend on their parents’ preference under Triad Unit 2’s plan for the 2021-22 school year. School board members approved the plan at their meeting Monday night in Troy, noting that it is subject to changes based on what happens with the virus.
District leaders, along with state and federal health officials, are encouraging students to wear masks when they return to school if they aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19. And in four of Triad’s six schools, none of the students in kindergarten through sixth grades are eligible for the vaccine because they are under 12 years old.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet reviewed data from clinical trials in children younger than 12 to decide the COVID-19 vaccine is safe for them like it has for adolescents and adults.
Triad’s plan allows parents to request K-6 students be placed in a classroom where masks are worn at all times.
Another option for students is only masking when teachers ask them to group up for a lesson or activity, like science lab partners.
The plan states that there could also be a mask mandate temporarily if the rate of infection were to increase in the community.
The federal government requires students to wear masks while riding school buses as well, so that is mandated in school plans across the metro-east, including in Triad, Highland and Collinsville schools, O’Fallon and Freeburg high schools and Belleville elementary schools.
Triad surveyed parents and consulted with education and health professionals as it drafted the plan, according to the administration.
Triad Superintendent Leigh Lewis said they tried to cover families’ concerns and implement guidance from experts, but she knows that not everyone will be happy with the result. Parents will have more opportunities to give the district their feedback, she said.
‘It’s starting to weigh on people’
Some families spoke out against masks and other mitigations during the school board meeting Monday, including members of Speak for Students, a local group organizing parents in Madison County to ask school boards not to mandate masks.
On Monday, the people who addressed Triad’s board said that rules like masking in school are contributing to stress, anxiety, fear and depression in their children and that parents should get to decide whether or not their child wears a mask at this point in the pandemic.
“Now, it’s starting to weigh on people,” Speak for Students co-founder Ryan Cunningham said in an interview Monday ahead of the meeting. “People are realizing the other impacts that it has on them, and those are taking precedent and priority ... and they have to be able to address those issues and concerns also for their individual families, right?”
Cunningham has two 6-year-old children in the Triad school district. He started Speak for Students with his wife Megan.
A few attendees pressed board members to answer why they weren’t giving parents control of the decision for students to wear masks in schools, at times becoming irritated that the plan didn’t include more relaxed mitigations. A police officer at the meeting asked one person to leave the room.
Lewis said the district’s goal is for students to get to learn in person after the public health emergency often sent kids home in 2020 for virtual classes. Triad is keeping masks around in the new school year in an effort to help prevent the virus from spreading in its schools, which would require quarantining students at home, Lewis added.
“Parents have choice,” she said of Triad’s plan. “And we have a responsibility to keep students safe while they are in school.”
How Triad came up with 2021-22 school plan
The district considered advice from the Madison County Health Department, pediatricians and superintendents in the county to develop its plan, Lewis said during Monday’s meeting. Triad administrators also sent out a survey they said received more than 2,500 responses from district parents and almost 300 responses from staff members that showed:
- Of the students who are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, almost half are vaccinated. And about 85% of the staff is vaccinated. (Lewis said any unvaccinated teachers will have to wear masks.)
- 16% of the parents of K-6 students would prefer for their child to be assigned to a classroom where masking is required.
There were 3,929 students and 236 teachers in Triad in 2020, according to information from the Illinois State Board of Education.
An option for fully-masked classrooms
The Triad district includes schools in Troy and the villages of St. Jacob and Marine with students from pre-K to high school.
Lewis said the district would offer one masked classroom at every grade level, K-5, at the two largest elementary schools, C A Henning and Silver Creek, plus one masked classroom for sixth-graders at Triad Middle School.
St. Jacob Elementary and Marine Elementary are smaller, and they had fewer parents interested in a masked classroom, according to Lewis. She said the district plans to work with any parents of St. Jacob or Marine students who want that option, which could mean sending their child to a masked classroom at one of the other elementary schools, if the parents sign off on it.
This story was originally published July 27, 2021 at 9:27 AM.
