COVID-19 mitigation measures in Naperville District 203 will be targeted site by site when necessary, rather than applied to every school districtwide, according to a district administrator.
Superintendent Dan Bridges outlined for the school board how District 203 will move forward now that students in the district no longer are required to wear face-coverings in school, though the district still recommends masks.
Meanwhile, students are wading through the challenges of following family decisions on masking at school, and Naperville North High School student ambassador Joanna Cho said students are conflicted.
“Both wearing a mask and not wearing a mask has implications beyond our health and safety, but also implications into our reputations and into conclusions about what we believe,” she said. “Mask or no mask, everybody has been prone to premature judgment, with rumors and whispers spreading at an all-time high.”
Bridges said a plan must be both flexible and responsive to the changing COVID-19 variants and ensure a safe and secure environment for students and staff.
“We must leverage what we’ve learned over the past couple of years in order to move forward and focus on our goal of healing, but also in our primary focus of the academic and social emotional growth for our students in a safe environment,” he said.
Bridges said the district will start by monitoring COVID-19 transmission trends within classrooms, grade levels, activities, and other groups in a school in addition to looking at the positivity rate and number of cases within ZIP codes to determine if additional layers of mitigation are needed within a building.
Those measures could include adding air purification systems, notifying families of a cluster of cases, increasing social distancing, masking in crowded hallways and spaces, implementing a “test to stay” approach for close contact, targeted masking at the school, or temporarily moving to remote learning.
“What we need to do is step away from a one-size-fits-all at every school across the district,” Bridges said, and avoid hitting an arbitrary number that triggers mitigation efforts.
The district also will track vaccine availability among children 5-17 years old and COVID-19 trends at Edward Hospital in Naperville.
“We can look at a series of data points. We can look at a series of indicators to make decisions, and still work to keep our kids safe and support keeping our communities safe,” Bridges said.
The monitored information will be posted in the coming week on the COVID-19 dashboard of each school’s website page, which Bridges said will provide parents with clarity and predictability in determining if mitigation measures might be implemented at their children’s schools.
Bridges said the district’s recent decision to move ahead with a mask-recommended policy was the result of the ongoing uncertainty over legal challenges to state mask requirements in public schools, COVID-19 metrics in District 203, and the district’s ability to mitigate risk to our students and staff.
Bridges said in the last six weeks, much of the district’s time, resources and energy has been spent on managing COVID-19 mitigation.
“It has detracted from our focus on our core mission of educating kids,” he said, and that changed with the new policy.
“I think there’s a sense of more of a focus now on the core mission of the work that we do here,” Bridges said.
subaker@tribpub.com
