Board will keep its no quarantine decision

Wednesday’s motion to change fails despite surge in COVID-19 cases

At its last meeting of 2021, the Anne Arundel County Board of Education voted to change COVID-19 quarantine procedures at schools, allowing students with no symptoms to remain in school buildings after coming into close contact with a case, instead of asking unvaccinated students in that situation to quarantine at home.

The change was made to reduce the number of students who were quarantined away from classes, which was more than 2,400 on Dec. 15, when the first vote took place.

Citing the omicron variant and rising case rates, student board member Bunmi Omisore sought to reverse that decision at the first meeting of the new year Wednesday afternoon. Her motion failed, with two members voting in favor, five voting against and one abstaining.

Omisore voted in favor of the change Dec. 15 but said what she has learned in the past few weeks has led her to believe now is not the right time to make the quarantine change. She said at Arundel High School she has noticed more asymptomatic infections as the omicron variant has spread.

“At the time that that motion was made I did not have a proper understanding of the effects of the omicron virus and the effects of COVID cases and the surges that would take place as we head into the holiday, and as we come out of it,” she said.

The majority of the board disagreed, and the policy will remain in place. Board President Joanna Bache Tobin said it was a tough decision, but she felt it was necessary because the school system was reaching a point where it couldn’t educate students. Administrators were being pulled away from essential duties to conduct contact

tracing. Shifting again would also be a mistake, she said.

“What our children have lost over these years, and what they desperately need, is some sort of stability. That is what we have to find a way to offer,” Tobin said. “We are not in the position we were in at the beginning of this pandemic. We have vaccinations. We have much more knowledge than we had.”

And she said people know what they need to do to reduce the spread of COVID-19; it is just that some have decided to refuse those actions like getting vaccinated and receiving booster shots.

“The impact of that is being felt throughout the system. I am concerned that we keep having our children pay the price for that,” she said.

District 5 member Dana Schallheim supported Omisore’s motion. She said when they took the vote Dec. 15, the seven-day average COVID19 case rate per 100,000 people in the county and state was less than 40. As of Wednesday the rate was 174 in Anne Arundel County and more than 200 statewide.

“I used to talk about a 45-degree trend line. Now I can unfortunately talk about a 90-degree trend line. It’s a vertical line,” Schallheim said.

Tobin, District 2 member Robert Silkworth, District 4 member Melissa Ellis, District 7 member Michelle Corkadel and District 3 member Corine Frank voted against Omisore’s motion, saying the disruption to learning posed by quarantining asymptomatic children and the burden on administrators to manage contact tracing is interrupting learning. District 1 member Gloria Dent abstained on the vote Wednesday; she voted against the Dec. 15 change, saying she did not think the board had taken the time to consider the change or poll the public.

Superintendent George Arlotto said administrators have reported working all day on contact tracing tasks and staying up late into the night making calls to contacts. Ellis said they have received feedback from administrators about the amount of time contact tracing is taking them.

“The sense I got is it is a lot of spinning wheels and a lot of healthy kids being kept out of the classroom. I can’t support this,” Ellis said.

Corkadel said she thinks the quarantine change has allowed the school system to strike a balance that ensures it is carrying out its primary function of educating children and not diverting too many resources to contact tracing.

“The very people who are pitching in on this, they have other obligations that can’t be ignored,” she said.