School has been back in session for multiple weeks in the Mat-Su, and students are returning to class after the Labor Day weekend.
As of the writing of this piece on Tuesday, September 7th, 2021, just under thirty percent of schools in the Mat-Su are in the “Medium Risk” category, meaning some level of mask requirements are in place for those campuses. One school, Snowshoe Elementary, is currently in the “High Risk” category, meaning there is no in-person learning taking place. By the time this hits the airwaves and the web, the district’s health advisory team will have met again, and that picture could look different.
Mat-Su Schools Superintendent Dr. Randy Trani says there is no bright line for when a school moves up or down in category, but that the team is learning based on what has happened so far. For instance, he says the response to the spread of COVID-19 at Butte Elementary earlier this school year was not fast enough, which resulted in the school closing temporarily. That has affected how quickly the district is acting going forward.
“So we are moving elementary schools to yellow…we’re being more sensitive and moving them quicker to yellow than we were, say, two-and-a-half weeks ago.”
One method district officials hope will help identify outbreaks sooner is testing in schools. Last year, the school district helped bolster contact tracing efforts. This year, Trani says that approach is not sustainable.
“It’s not practical. You can’t do it five days a week, seven periods a day. The number of close contacts a high school student could have is huge, huge, huge.”
Instead of contact tracing, Trani says the school district is focusing on testing. He says concentrating on positive tests instead of close contacts yields more efficient data.
“We had something like 40,000 student days of instruction lost last year because they were close contacts. We only had 1,500 cases for the entire year, and the majority of those were not close contacts.”
Testing in the Mat-Su right now can be an all-day commitment. Local social media groups are filled with photos of long lines at the mass testing site in the old Sears building in Wasilla. The school district has also encountered supply problems with tests, but Trani hopes that will be alleviated.
Jillian Morrissey, Public Information Officer for the school district, says schools can help fill the need in communities where testing options are limited.
“For some communities that may not have testing sites close, getting the kids at school–if that is the only way they can get tested, it’s not ideal–but we do have that capacity.”
Morrissey adds that parents should not send their children to school if they have COVID-like symptoms.
Judging from the rate of absences in the district, as high as forty percent some days at some schools, Trani says it appears that parents are indeed keeping their children home more often when they are feeling ill.
“That just means parents are doing the most important part of our mitigation plan, which is keep your student home. If they have any symptom at all, wait to get them tested.”
With all this in mind, how do the current COVID numbers stack up against last year? Trani says staff cases are down by more than fifty percent, which he attributes largely to vaccination. For older students in grades 6-12, the numbers are about the same as last year, but Trani believes that would be higher without vaccines.
“We went back to seven periods a day. We went back to five days a week….Masks are optional until we are in yellow this year. Those are three factors going one way. We added a Delta variant. And kids got vaccinated, and the cases are about the exact same.”
Trani is a proponent of vaccination as a means to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on school district operations, though recognizes that it’s currently not possible for younger students to receive one.
When a student tests positive at school, parents of other children in the same grade or who may otherwise have been around that student will receive a notice that their child has potentially been exposed. Trani says this is not part of a larger contact tracing program by the school district, but rather a purely informational notice.
“We’re trying to be as transparent as we can and let people know, ‘Hey, there was a case in the school in your kid’s classroom…’ So we’re going to send you an exposure notification because we want you to have as much information as you can.”
Trani says the idea of the notice is to allow parents to make more informed decisions about their children moving forward, potentially including self-imposed mitigation measures or testing. He also acknowledges that the notification itself doesn’t always provide a lot of information.
“I recognize that it can be really confusing. The one thing that isn’t confusing is if we test. If you let us test your student, we can give you a definitive answer. Yes, they have [COVID-19], or no, they don’t.”
With the state fair ending and students returning after a long weekend, the school district is aware of the potential for an increase in COVID-19 cases. Jillian Morrissey says the district’s health advisory team, which meets daily, took that into account when making decisions about keeping schools in the “Medium Risk” category after Labor Day. Now, district officials, the health advisory team, students, teachers, and parents will wait to see what happens.
