All must wear masks again in this Johnson County school district as COVID cases soar

The Shawnee Mission school district is bringing back its universal mask mandate, as the district works to remain open despite ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks and staff shortages.

The school board on Monday unanimously agreed to require everyone to wear masks through Feb. 15. As of Monday, the district reported that 919 students and 111 staff members have tested positive for the virus.

The district continues to follow a Johnson County health order mandating masks in schools that serve students as old as sixth grade. But the board previously made masks optional in secondary schools when students returned from winter break — but only if a school’s COVID-19 case rate stayed below a certain threshold.

If a school building reports that 3% or more of its population is required to quarantine or isolate, the building returns to a mask mandate for at least two weeks.

Shortly after winter break, all of the district’s high school and middle schools were forced to return to a mask mandate.

But that strategy is no longer feasible, said Superintendent Michelle Hubbard, now that health departments are suspending many contact tracing efforts.

As it reported a record COVID-19 infection rate, Johnson County health officials told districts earlier this month that contact tracing within schools “is no longer feasible.” And the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced it would end its contact tracing program, saying it was a step toward managing COVID as an endemic.

“As of last week the state and county health departments announced they would be suspending contact tracing for 30 days,” Hubbard said in a statement. “The 3% threshold we had built into our plan only works well when we are able to account for identifying quarantines by the county health department. The school district does not have legal authority to contact trace or quarantine and as a result of that we are recommending universal masking through February 15, 2022, due to the extremely high number of infections in our county and the uptick of cases in our schools.”

Hubbard said the district will continue to monitor cases to determine whether to extend the universal mask mandate or return to the previous rules after Feb. 15.

Meanwhile, several Kansas City area districts have been forced to close schools for days this month as they struggle to operate amid severe staffing shortages. The Olathe and Kansas City, Kansas, districts, for example, closed schools for part of last week. Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley, Park Hill, Raymore-Peculiar and others have warned parents to prepare for potential closures as virus outbreaks continue.

Last week, Belton and Odessa school districts announced they would return to virtual classes for a few days in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.