Despite surges in COVID-19 cases brought on by the Omicron variant, the Macon County Board of Education chose not to return to a mask mandate during the monthly meeting on Monday night.
On Friday, Jan. 21, there were 144 students and staff members in the school system who were out of school due to COVID-19 positivity or quarantine, as well as 184 students and staff members who would have had to quarantine if they weren’t vaccinated. On Monday, Superintendent Chris Baldwin said another 14 students and three staff members had to be added to the totals. Even with a recent reduction in quarantine periods from 10 days to five, losing people to quarantine has an adverse effect on in-person presence, with multiple schools having to shift to temporary virtual learning.
“There are at least nine staff out at Macon Middle School. Most of those staff can return by the 27th, and that’s when we hope to be able to return to in-person instruction at Macon Middle School,” Baldwin said. “Today, 30% of Union Academy staff were unable to report to work. They’ve reverted to remote learning at least through Thursday.”
The main resource Macon County Schools uses to address the spread is the NC Strong Schools Toolkit, which considers the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and how they can be effectively implemented in schools. The toolkit was updated on Jan. 10 to reflect relaxed rules on quarantining, which means students and staff who are feeling healthy after an exposure can get back to school faster. However, the toolkit also advises all students and staff to wear masks in close quarters even if they haven’t been exposed.
“All schools should require all children and staff in schools K-12th grade to wear face coverings consistently when indoors,” reads the NC Strong Schools Toolkit. “Because students cannot mask consistently during mealtimes, students should maintain physical distancing of a minimum of 3 feet to the fullest extent possible when actively eating. Consider having meals outside where risk of virus transmission is low.”
The Omicron variant has been contributing to surges in positive cases all over the country, and Macon County is no exception. There were 687 active cases in the county on Monday afternoon, a sharp increase from before Christmas, when active cases were hovering in the 50s and 60s. The School Board expected numbers to go way up once everyone finished traveling and got back from Christmas break, but the uptick was still jarring to see.
“In three weeks, we had 14 transmissions, whereas in [the previous] two months, we had three,” board member Hilary Wilkes said.
However, the board members didn’t feel the need to change their current mask optional policy. The community has been opposed to mask mandates all school year long and the uptick that they’ve seen in cases and quarantines isn’t beyond what they were already expecting. Baldwin also pointed to the increased rates of transmission throughout the county as evidence that more stringent prevention policies in school wouldn’t make much of a difference – if not school, students will likely be exposed somewhere.
“With our community transmission rate the way that it is right now, it’s highly likely that they caught it outside of school or at home,” Baldwin said. “With 818 positive cases [all year] and only 46 of those cases being deemed possible or probable in-school transmissions… there is a significant number of identified exposures that are outside of school.”
The board members voted unanimously to maintain their current mask-optional policy.
The next meeting of the Macon County Board of Education will be held on Monday, Feb. 28 at the Macon County Schools Central Office.