SCS will continue mask requirement
All students and staff are to wear face coverings as they return to in-person classroom setting Aug. 9
Shelby County Schools, Tennessee’s largest district, will continue requiring masks of all students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, the district announced Tuesday. At least two of the six surrounding suburban districts plan to return with masks optional.
Though students are currently enrolled in summer learning camps in person, the mask guidance remains in effect as all SCS students are required to return to in-person learning for the first time on Aug. 9 since the district shuttered in March 2020. Since then, all inperson attendance for students has been optional. Teachers were required to return in-person last March.
The district says it encourages COVID-19 vaccinations, but will not require them of students or employees.
“The District is mindful of the rising cases and the spread of the Delta variant,” the SCS announcement said. “Therefore, masks should be worn indoors (schools) and on buses by all employees and students, regardless of vaccination status, until further notice.”
The move is in line with American Academy of Pediatrics guidance issued Monday, calling for students to learn in
person this school year and that for all people, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks in schools. The guidance is slightly more conservative than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has so far only recommended masks for unvaccinated students — which, in many instances, will be most in a school building, since vaccines are only available to people 12 and older.
All students and adults in schools and on buses are required to wear masks “until further notice,” per the district protocol.
Employees are “strongly encouraged” to wear masks when in administrative offices.
“Let’s be real clear. August 9th,” Superintendent Joris Ray said Tuesday, pausing to implore reporters to listen, “...we are returning to in-person instruction for all students, grades pre-k through 12. If you come to our buildings, anyone entering into the building must wear a mask. All students will have on masks. Anybody in our building interacting with our students must wear masks.”
In addition to masks, the district will implement social distancing indoors where possible, including in classrooms, hallways, common spaces, in the cafeteria line and while eating.
SCS “discourages” classrooms from having shared school supplies among students.
People in school buildings who have symptoms will continue going to a quarantine room in the school building, as was protocol for last school year. People who don’t feel well should not report to school, SCS said.
Schools will have bottled water for students but the district encourages them to bring their own empty water bottle containers.
Schools will receive personal protective equipment as needed and regular cleaning practices will continue. The “sneeze guards” and dividers in classrooms will continue to be in use.
Playgrounds will reopen and fall sports will resume, as did spring sports last semester.
SCS distinct from others in approach as delta ignited by under-vaccinated South
So far, SCS is distinct from surrounding Shelby County districts as well as other Tennessee districts in its mask requirement. But local experts have encouraged school districts with mostly unvaccinated children to remain vigilant against the delta variant, which is now the dominant variant in the United States and is far more transmissible than the original coronavirus.
“If we take a more contagious variant like Delta, and throw in less aggressive mitigation measures, we could have a much more significant experience of spread in the schools,” Stephen Threlkeld, co-chair of the infection control program at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis told The Commercial Appeal in June. “And that’s what we all also obviously want to avoid.”
In Tennessee, schools are not allowed to reduce class sizes by implementing hybrid schedules, based on a state education board vote last April. State policy requires that all virtual learning be done through virtual schools.
Metro Nashville Public Schools is “highly encouraging” masks among its unvaccinated students and staffers, but not requiring them, per an announcement last week.
In Shelby County, Collierville plans to announce its protocols for the upcoming school year next week, a spokesperson said Tuesday.
In the Arlington district, which had protocols readily accessible online, masks will remain optional, an update the district instituted last May. The district plans to release information about additional back-to-school protocols in the next week or so, a spokesperson said Tuesday evening.
Collierville and Germantown schools were also mask-optional by the end of the school year, an update the three districts made as masks restrictions lifted across Shelby County. At the time, Millington and Lakeland school districts intended to go mask-optional for their summer courses, and Bartlett remained undecided.
Lakeland will alo open with masks optional in the fall, Superintendent Ted Horrell said by email Tuesday.
“We will conduct contact tracing and exclude students from school if they are unvaccinated and close contacts of a confirmed case,” he said.
Efforts to reach Bartlett, Germantown and Millington districts were not immediately successful Tuesday.
In Tennessee, where the top vaccine official was recently fired, only 38.4% of people are fully vaccinated, compared to 50% nationwide. Shelby County is nearly on par with the state, at 37% of residents fully vaccinated.
It is not immediately clear how much of the eligible pediatric population has been fully vaccinated locally, based on data published by the health department. Nearly 19,000 of almost 400,000 shots administered in the county have gone to people younger than 18, but it is unclear how many of those are first doses.
The Shelby County Health Department is continuing with outreach efforts to children for COVID-19 vaccines and all other immunizations, recently holding two back-to-school shot events, unlike the Tennessee Department of Health.
Around the same time the state’s vaccine director was fired, the state health commissioner circulated an internal memo ordering the department to halt all vaccine outreach efforts to children for all vaccines amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers.
SCS has and will continue to share information about vaccines with families, a district spokesperson said Tuesday.