SAD 41 school board approves fall return plan

MILO — The SAD 41 school board approved a plan for when students return to classes during its special meeting held Tuesday, Aug. 17 at Penquis Valley School.

Students return to classes on Wednesday, Sept. 1. The plan, which can be adjusted as the 2021-22 school year progresses, has in-person learning for all five days a week, mask wearing indoors by students and staff depending on  community transmission rates and many other components. The fall return plan is posted at www.msad41.us.

Superintendent Michael Wright said several weeks ago district officials thought they would be in a different place than they are now, before the rise in COVID-19 cases. He said this led to more uncertainty about what classes might look like when students came back to the building. 

Wright said that last year under the state of emergency the Maine CDC and Department of Education provided mandates for how schools should operate.

 “The school up the road and the school down the road were doing the same thing,” he said, such as everyone wearing masks and social distancing.

The superintendent said for 2021-22 there are not many mandates, “but the state is strongly recommending things, which is as close to mandating as you can get without mandating.” Wright said he does not like to change what is being asked of students and staff week by week, but that may be inevitable this school year with a fluctuation in case numbers for the region.

He said there is a new color code system in place for community transmissions. This is made up of blue for low, yellow for moderate, orange for substantial and red for high, with the colors potentially changing on a week by week basis.

Wright said with Piscataquis County having fewer than 17,000 residents, it does not take much to change the color designation. He said the region is currently red, but unlike a year ago students can still learn in person under the most severe categorization.

“This year’s red is not last year’s red,” the superintendent said “There will be no overall remote learning this year.”

“That’s been the desire by the state for some time, to have no more remote learning,” he said, barring a few case-specific exceptions such as a student needing to quarantine.

Under the fall return plan, which will also be in place for the other AOS 43 school district SAD 31 of Howland, Wright said masks would be worn in the buildings “as we ended last year.” He said this could be looked at again at the October school board meeting if case numbers in Piscataquis County decrease.

“We would rather start wearing a mask rather than not and wishing that we did,” the superintendent said.

Masks would not be required outside, but will need to be worn to ride on all school transportation per state regulations.

 Vaccinations are encouraged for those eligible but not required. Wright said SAD 41 might host clinics to help students get their vaccines.

Assistant Superintendent Darcie Fournier said feedback was collected from the community since the Aug. 4 board meeting to help develop the fall return plan. “The first thing I want to point out is this is a working document, things are changing daily and sometimes hourly,” she said.

“We are going to continually revise based on the safety needs of our community,” Fournier said. 

She said under the plan three feet of social distancing will be maintained when possible, hand hygiene will be practiced, surfaces will be cleaned regularly, students will have health checks at home in the morning and are encouraged to stay home when sick, and schools will have staggered starts like last year.

SAD 41 District Nurse Bethany Heal was asked about pool testing. She explained under this system students, with parental permission, would be in pods of five to 25 and they would have their nostrils swabbed. The samples would be sent off to the lab for testing. If there is a positive case in the pool then the pupils would be tested again to determine who is positive.

The student(s) testing positive would need to quarantine, but others in the pool would not need to do so.

Wright said he felt pool testing would be too cumbersome for SAD 41 to carry out.

“For us it just felt like it didn’t fit for our community, our school,” Heal said. She mentioned the various testing steps would take time out of students’ days and could be a distraction. She also said nationally about only one in 100 pod tests contain a positive sample.

Wright said situations involving a high number of cases would be handled individually by district officials with various options on the table. He said hypothetically a school could be temporarily shut down if this is deemed to be the safest thing to do.

“The MPA is saying follow CDC and local guidelines,” Penquis Valley Athletic Director Jason Mills said. He said the fall season sports will be outside so masks will not be needed during practices and competitions.

Mills said the facewear will be on when traveling on school buses, and when the Patriot/Railroader soccer teams are on the road, the squads would follow all guidelines in place at the other campuses should these differ from SAD 41’s.