NWA EDITORIAL: School boards keep eyes on learning, require masks to avoid disruptions

In many communities across the nation, school board meetings have, at times, become battlegrounds over covid-19 policymaking.

Reports in these early days of the 2021-22 school year have come in from all over the country describing valiant efforts by educators, administrators and elected school board representatives to navigate the third academic year affected by the pandemic. Their goal? To jealously guard their schools' ability to maintain in-person classroom instruction.

Disruption is the enemy of institutional education. Whether with dress codes, attendance policies or rules about what can and cannot be brought into school buildings, the goal of school district polices is to create an environment in which learning can happen. That requires giving students, faculty and staff a sense of security and, in these days of the highly communicable delta variant of the coronavirus, a concerted effort to keep students together without creating a petri dish-like environment in which the disease can run rampant.

Vaccines are the most effective means to protect everyone from infection. Are they perfect? Nobody has ever made that claim. Vaccinated people have seriously reduced the odds against becoming infected, but covid-19 is aggressive enough that it can "break through" the body's bolstered defenses. Even so, in almost all breakthrough cases, vaccines prevent serious illness.

Just as in war one never relies only on one strategy or tool to defend against an enemy, so it goes with the worldwide fight against covid-19. That's where school boards have been enlisted in the pandemic battle, because sickness equals disruption. And beyond the difficult health effects covid-19 can have on individuals, schools have to face up to the desperate need to avoid as much disruption to the educational environment as possible.

Despite hard work, the upheaval required in the last two academic seasons has been significant as far as its impact on learning. Educators in Year Three are working diligently to keep students in class, where the most successful learning happens for most.

And that's where another tool from the arsenal -- the mask -- has been employed.

Masks reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Some people will argue over that literally until the kids come home. But reliable study after study has demonstrated that, while not foolproof, consistent and widespread use of masks serves as a barrier to the transmission of the virus from person to person.

Just Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released three more school-focused studies that show how masking is a critical component of prevention of covid-19's spread.

School boards in Northwest Arkansas have had to face the decision this year of whether to require masks or not within their school buildings. And it's easy to tell from listening to some board members' comments that they're not big fans of government mandates. Indeed, for some, it sounds like a mandate to wear masks is the very last thing they would ever have imagined themselves supporting.

Decisions have clearly not been easy, but most school board members -- to their lasting credit -- have been able to set aside the more political -- some might say hysterical -- points of the debate and focus on the best ways to avoid disruption in this school year's educational environment.

Last week, both Rogers and Bentonville revisited their policies on masks. Bentonville retained a requirement for students and employees to wear masks indoors at least through Oct. 20. In Rogers, the school board revised its policy to make masks optional for staff and students in seventh grade and above, but to require them for pre-K through sixth-grade staff and students. Those grades generally cover the ages ineligible so far to receive vaccinations.

What is satisfying in both examples is the degree to which most school board members and administrators decline to just spitball their decisions. They're looking for metrics, some kind of reasonable data-driven model by which to make their decisions. In Rogers, the board authorized Superintendent Marlin Berry to lift the mask requirement if positive cases of covid-19 for the district decrease to 20 to 29 infections per 10,000 residents over a 14-day period. At the time of the vote, the rate was between 30 and 49 cases per 10,000 residents, school officials reported.

In Bentonville, school board members included a stipulation that Superintendent Debbie Jones can relax mask rules if covid-19 infections over a 14-day period drop below 30 per 10,000 district residents. The area rate as of last week sat at 51.

Essentially, these school officials are saying they will be responsive when the data demands it and will back off somewhat when the data show adequate improvement. Who can argue with such an approach?

There remain some school board members, and Northwest Arkansas residents, who will resist proven methods of prevention as long as they can find any website to support their contention that masks don't help or, even, that masks are harmful. It's refreshing that so far, school boards have resisted such quackery.

Likewise in the realm of data-driven actions, it makes sense for school officials to address their concerns about "over-quarantining" -- that is, state rules or guidelines that send too many people home from school for days on end when the data suggests they stand little chance of an infection from an incidental exposure. Arkansas officials have, throughout the pandemic, made adjustments to deal with newly realized realities. Some school leaders say it's really the quarantining rules that create the biggest disruptions by essentially being overly cautious.

It's a fine line to walk, for sure, but the coronavirus has demonstrated how it adjusts to its environment. Schools must do the same. When data show precautions are unnecessarily too aggressive, relax them. When the data show covid-19 is getting the upper hand, schools leaders must adjust to that as well.

Within the schools, this doesn't need to be about freedom or rights or the Constitution. It's got to be about preserving the ability to educate children. That means keeping them in class, benefiting from the face-to-face instruction from dedicated educators who themselves benefit from the precautions taken.

Speaking on Friday in Fayetteville, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Arkansas must continue to improve education, particularly noting the achievement gap exacerbated by covid-19's disruptions in schools across the state over the last 18 months or so. He knows learning works best in most cases when students are in the classroom, not when they're home with parents who in most cases do not have the teaching skills, even if they have the knowledge, nor the time to be an effective substitute for professional educators.

Keeping the kids in school must be Priority No. 1. Where masks make that more likely, schools should require them.