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Parents of Montoursville students wanting clarity and a school board that seemed to be in disagreement with each other on how much guidance to provide in the district's Health and Safety Plan expressed their frustrations at a recent meeting of the board.
In the end, minor changes to the wording were made to the plan and the board agreed that the job of informing parents of any changes in COVID protocol should be placed on the administration.
Sections of the Health and Safety Plan that were tweaked, according to David Shimmel, board president, were primarily concerning quarantining and contact tracing of students who have come into contact with people who have COVID, but are asymptomatic.
The wording from the July 2021 iteration of the plan stated that the district would "continue to work with the Pennsylvania Department of Health contact tracing requirements. Exceptions will be allowed by either: providing proof of vaccination status or voluntarily providing proof of positive antibody testing. Should persons provide such information they will be exempt from quarantine."
The new wording simplified the protocol and eliminated the exceptions, stating that the "district administration will immediately notify the public upon any changes to contact tracing and quarantining procedures."
All changes to the Health and Safety Plan and a flow chart explaining the procedures for students and staff who have been exposed to COVID either at home or school were on the district website the day after the meeting. Parents should follow the procedures detailed there.
One of the main concerns that parents shared with the board was that students were spending too much time away from the classroom because of quarantining. They also argued that other districts had changed protocols for quarantining in order to get students back in the classrooms.
One Montoursville district resident, Sharon Meyer, who was also a member of the committee which formulated the Health and Safety Plan advocating for changes to the plan.
"Since the pandemic began in this county, Lycoming County has not had a single death of anyone under the age of 30. We keep putting this burden on our children and we keep keeping them out of school when they're healthy," Meyer stated.
Referring to the report from an area district which found that only 4 percent of students that are contact traced actually contracted COVID, Meyer said, "So, I'm just asking that the board allow healthy children to be in school and allow parents to do the job of monitoring their symptoms and keeping their sick children home."