Arizona school authorities will have few options after classes resume should a COVID-19 outbreak occur on campus, thanks to legislative and governor orders that contradict recommendations by the Federal Disease Control Centers.
The double appointments complicate the almost universal desire to safely resume in-person tuition after a disrupted year that has resulted in many students losing months of academic advancement.
First, Arizona lawmakers passed law that “a school district or charter school cannot require a student or teacher to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or wear a face-covering to attend in-person classes.”
This contradicts recent advice from the CDC that unvaccinated students and teachers should wear masks indoors.
Peoria Unified and Catalina Foothills school districts recently passed a policy stating that unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 should be quarantined at home for 10 days. Unvaccinated students do not need to be quarantined if they are exposed, as the current vaccines are 95% effective against the original strain and 85% even against the rapidly spreading Delta strain, according to several recent studies.
The guideline complies with the recommendations of the federal CDC.
That’s exactly what most school districts did last year when they offered face-to-face classes – before vaccines were approved for children ages 12-16. It also aligns with the Arizona Department of Health Services’ proposal that any unvaccinated person exposed to someone with an active infection be quarantined for 14 days.
However, Governor Doug Ducey’s Education Police Advisor Kaitlin Harrier ruled the policy illegal last week due to the recently passed law change. She ordered the district to drop this requirement.
“All children in Arizona are entitled to public education and adding those qualifications and banning children from their classrooms for 10 days at a time, which is against the law is not in anyone’s best interests,” wrote Harrier.
Coincidentally, US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was having a round table discussion with students and educators from Tohono O’odham Community College last week.
He urged all schools to switch to face-to-face teaching but to follow public health guidelines – such as requiring unvaccinated students to wear masks indoors on campus.
“I would encourage all schools to open full-time five days a week at the beginning of the coming school year while considering how to innovate with blended learning approaches,” Cardona said, according to a report in the Arizona Republic. “But I think after this long year the students should study. We want to ensure that our educators are supported in making the right decisions or applying the containment strategies that health officials believe should be followed in their local jurisdiction. “
Decisions that violate containment strategies “work against the goal of getting students back safely every day,” he said.
The duplication of decisions leaves school authorities the impossible choice of following between state and federal outbreak containment guidelines and the new law as interpreted by the governor’s office.
Studies suggest that schools can spawn clusters of cases, especially when it comes to the faster-spreading Delta virus. The new strain appears to be more likely to infect children but is unlikely to cause fatal disease. There is evidence that COVID-19 can kill children – but adults are at a much higher risk of death. Doctors have found that severe symptoms can last for months, even if the children had very mild side effects during the initial infection.
Efforts to quarantine children who tested positive or had a positive case proved disruptive in some counties last fall. The Payson School District closed two campuses for extended periods after a cluster of cases exposed dozens of children – and many unvaccinated teachers. The district was unable to find enough replacement teachers to keep the high and middle school campuses open after large numbers of teachers were quarantined.
According to the current CDC recommendations, however, only the unvaccinated teachers would have to be quarantined.
Payson Schools superintendent Linda Gibson said the district had not received guidance from the state or district health department on rules for reopening in early August, but the district will not have a mask mandate.
New COVID-19 cases in Arizona have increased more than 79% in the past two weeks, with only 44% of the population being fully vaccinated. It is unclear how many students between the ages of 12 and 18 were vaccinated, with numbers not being regularly updated on the Arizona Department of Health website. The latest figures show that 15% of people under 20 years of age across the state were vaccinated, but only 5.6% of those in Gila County, 15% in Navajo County, and 20% in Apache County.
Health officials say vaccinated teenagers and adults are at very little risk of infection, even if exposed to the virus. Even if a “breakthrough infection” does occur, the vaccine greatly reduces the severity of the disease.
However, due to state rules, schools now have no way of identifying unvaccinated students, asking them to say at home if infected, asking other exposed children to stay at home, or asking students or teachers to wear masks on campus to demand.
The US Food and Drug Administration is currently reviewing applications from Moderna and Pfizer to remove the “emergency” usage designation and extend regular approval for their shots. The vaccines have been shown to be safe and highly effective after administration to hundreds of millions of people.
Full approval of the vaccine would make it easier for employers to request the shot – including the military. However, the juvenile vaccine was only recently approved and may not be covered by the initial regulatory change.
So there is no immediate prospect that schools will need the vaccine the same way they need vaccinations against measles, whooping cough, polio and other diseases now.
Health officials say the best way to keep children safe and avoid campus clusters is to get parents to get the vaccinations, which are widely available and free.
Peter Aleshire covers county government and other issues for the Independent. He is the former editor of the Payson Roundup. Reach out to him at [email protected]
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