Health rules change for closures

Larimer County parents, commissioners expressed frustration over closure of Resurrection Christian High School

Colorado rules for closing classrooms and schools when students test positive for the coronavirus are now consistent between all levels of education, from elementar y schools to universities.

State health officials changed their rules just before 5 p.m. Tuesday, just hours after the Larimer County commissioners and some parents expressed frustration with what they said was an “inconsistent”

system.

“Consistency, I think, is really important,” County Commissioner John Kefalas said to Larimer County Health Director Tom Gonzales at a Tuesday morning meeting. “I ask that you convey that to the state folks so people don’t feel they are on a roller coaster.”

Several parents from Resurrection Christian High School in Loveland spoke to the Larimer County commissioners Tuesday morning about that roller coaster, the ups and downs their students experienced when the entire school closed for a week recently after one student tested positive for COVID-19.

The high school closed for the week of Sept. 21 after one student at that level tested positive for the coronavirus, and 83 total students were quarantined for two weeks. Typically, health officials would close just one classroom of a school — a move they have done at several schools including the elementary and middle school levels at Resurrection Christian — because the students are staying in small groups.

The situation was different at the high school, Gonzales said, because there was “a lot more mixing between the students” and because contact tracers could not complete all the necessary calls in time to close just a por tion of the school. He stressed that the decision to close was dif ficult but necessar y.

“I am mandated to protect the well-being of the community,” he said. “At that point, I did not feel like we had a good grasp on who had contact and who didn’t.”

The school was closed for a week and has now reopened with some new measures in place, Gonzales said. He added that he does not foresee a repeat of the need to close an entire school.

Three parents and the athletic director at the Christian school

expressed their frustrations about the closure during the Tuesday morning meeting, as did one other resident with students in the Poudre School District.

They said the week of the school closure was stressful to the students and their families, and they spoke of young people suffering from depression and other mental health problems and of the negative effects of keeping kids out of school and out of extracurricular activities.

Lori Mcwhinney said her daughter was nowhere near the student who was infected but yet was told “she had to shut down her life for two weeks.” She said the closure was detrimental to the students and called the state rules that led to the decision an “overreach.”

“This pandemic is hur ting this age group,” Mcwhinney said.

Erin Eskew described the closure as disruptive to her two high school students and also said she doesn’t pay tuition to have her student completing school lessons in her bedroom at home. She said the closure was traumatic to students, and stressed the mental health aspects of the situation on children.

“I know that sounds overdramatic, but it’s mildly traumatic,” Eskew said. “You’re disrupting their education. … We’re creating an entire generation of kids with mild trauma.”

The elected commissioners, too, expressed frustrations with state Health Department rules on Tuesday morning. Their complaint was not specific to Resurrection Christian but to that fact that, until late Tuesday, there were different rules in place for elementary, middle and high schools versus colleges and universities.

Commissioner Steve Johnson even suggested to Gonzales that, if the health rules didn’t change soon, to consider breaking away from the state rules and being consistent locally. But before the county reached that point, new guidance came in from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Katie O’donnell, Larimer County’s health depar tment spokeswoman, described it as “assessments done at the local level” for all schools instead of just for higher education.

Previously, Larimer County health of ficials, bound by state guidance, were forced to implement either blanket closures for classrooms or schools at the elementary, middle or high school levels when a student or staff member tested positive for the coronavirus. They decided whether to close classrooms or entire schools, and whom to quarantine from those schools, based upon whether students remained in small groups at school, limiting the numbers of other students and staff members with whom they come in contact.

At colleges and universities, however, health officials were able to conduct complete contact tracing and have the ability to quarantine only those who had close contact with the infected person.

Now, the county can have local control over closures at all levels of schools, based on the individual circumstances. That is the change Gonzales said earlier Tuesday that he was hoping would occur.

Pamela Johnson: 970-699-5405, johnsonp@reporter-herald.com