Alexandria School District 206 has updated its mitigation strategies for addressing COVID-19 for the coming school year.
Face coverings will be required for K-6 students when they are inside school buildings beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 7 and they are strongly encouraged for 7th through 12th-grade students.
Also, face coverings are required for all school staff starting Tuesday, Aug. 31.
The precautions will be in place for at least the first two weeks of school.
Increased COVID-19 cases in Douglas County is driving the changes, according to Superintendent Rick Sansted, who emailed a letter to parents about the decision on Friday, Aug. 27.
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"As of yesterday (Aug. 26), the COVID rate in Douglas County continues to be at a high transmission level ," Sansted said in the letter. "This high transmission rate along with the 14 day county case rate puts us at a Tier III level of mitigation strategies . The county case rate has nearly doubled in the last 11 days. We also learned yesterday of a district in southern Minnesota who started school this week had over 35 positive cases and nearly 300 quarantines."
District 206 is implementing Tier III mitigation strategies to keep students safe, Sansted added.
"Our duty of care compels us to create as safe a learning environment as we can," he said. "These K-12 strategies give us the best chance to keep students healthy and sustain our in-person learning model. We know this works, because these are many of the same strategies that allowed our district to sustain an in-person learning model for our youngest learners last school year."
Given the county's case rates and the district's desire to start and maintain in-person learning, Sansted listed the following strategy:
- Face coverings will be required for K-6 students when they are inside beginning on Tuesday, Sept. This does not apply if a student has a medical exemption or if the student has a qualified IEP plan. K-12 students have an exception per the CDC that if you are a close contact of a positive case and both students were wearing a face covering, the close contact student would not have to quarantine.
- Face coverings are strongly encouraged for 7-12 students when they are inside beginning on Tuesday, Sept. 7. K-12 students have an exception per the CDC that if you are a close contact of a positive case and both students were wearing a face covering, the close contact student would not have to quarantine.
- Face coverings are required for all staff starting Tuesday, Aug. 31.
"Our decision to implement the Tier III mitigation strategies considered the risk of our students under the age of 12, our focus on maintaining in-person learning, and our desire to minimize quarantining of students and staff due to positive cases given the current data trend" Sansted said. "K-6 students are an almost exclusively unvaccinated population. Even parents wanting their children to receive vaccinations are not yet eligible.
"We are going to stay responsive to the data," Sansted added. "We are going to be in this Tier III area for the first two weeks of school. We will monitor the county data as well as our school data from Sept. 7 through Sept. 21. Our COVID Advisory Team will meet again on Thursday, Sept. 23 to review the data and next steps. "
