Masks to stay in place at Royal Valley

The Royal Valley Board of Education will continue to require face masks in school buildings. 

During the RV B.O.E meeting on Monday evening, members learned that district administrators and staff members are working to secure a grant to test “close contact” students and teachers in order to keep them at school during their 10-day quarantine period. 

Once the “test to stay” testing is in place, and COVID-19 numbers remain low, Superintendent Davis said that he would recommend to the board to reconsider the face mask requirement.

“The good news is that COVID numbers are dropping in the district,” Davis said. “Right now, things are looking pretty good in terms of the data.” 

Davis said he thinks there are two things the board needs to keep in mind regarding the district’s face mask policy – the safety of students and the ability to keep students in school if they are placed in quarantine.

“It’s hard to say what’s happening with our numbers right now,” he said. “It it because masking is working or is it because the Delta variant is running its course and it’s on its way out the door? I don’t really know the answer to that question. It’s hard to say where we’ll be in two to three weeks.”

The district has applied for a Kansas Department of Health and Environment grant that would allow the district to test “close contact” students (with parent permission) and staff members each morning of their 10-day quarantine period. If they test negative in the morning, then they may attend classes and extracurricular activities that day. 

“We should hear back in the next week, and then it’s just a matter of getting the actual antigen tests inside the district and the machines to read them,” Davis said. “I don’t think we’re a long ways away from getting those up and running.”

Davis that said, in his opinion, the district’s mask requirement is “doing a good job of keeping kids in school and learning with in-person instruction.”

“I don’t have a great plan of how to control quarantines until we get this ‘test to learn’ strategy in place,” he said. 

Until the rapid antigen testing is in place, Davis isn’t recommending that the district ease up on its face mask requirements. 

“If we just remove masks because our numbers are looking good, then I fear that every time we have a positive case, we run the risk of sending home 20 to 25 kids home per case,” he said. 

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