FORT SMITH -- The Fort Smith School Board unanimously approved removing the district's 30-day mask mandate effective immediately, following the recent decrease in local covid-19 cases.
The School Board enacted the mandate during its Jan. 10 meeting. The mandate would've automatically expired at the end of the school day on Wednesday. Superintendent Terry Morawski was allowed to remove the mask mandate before then if Sebastian County had fewer than 49 covid-19 cases per 10,000 residents for a consecutive 14-day period.
The Arkansas Center for Health Improvement's covid-19 dashboard reports that Sebastian County had 200 cases or more per 10,000 residents as of Jan. 31.
Morawski said district cases have severely declined from 520 students and 121 staff members on Jan. 14 to 27 students and 16 staff currently.
"Additionally, in a press conference last week Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced it would no longer be a requirement for schools to contact trace," Morawski said. "Previous requirements related to contact tracing and quarantining of those students and staff led to incredible disruption in our schools. With this new flexibility, we're able to eliminate contact tracing in our schools whether or not we have a mask requirement."
At-large board member Matt Blaylock requested the mandate be removed immediately.
At-large board member Dalton Person said he'd prefer to let the mandate expire but was fine with voting to remove it.
"My goal in January for moving to enact a mask requirement was to enable us to keep schools open," Person said. "And we effectively did that. While other districts had to close their doors, we kept students fed, kept the heat on, we kept kids learning in an environment that they need to learn at. So now that the state has changed its guidance to no longer require us to do that contact tracing and have those heightened quarantine requirements, I think the need for the masks has gone down significantly, in addition to simply a matter of numbers."
Morawski clarified that the district was previously allowed to stop contact tracing due to having a mandate, and they do not intend to contact trace now due to the new requirements. He said the district will still track positive cases, and students and staff will be allowed extended absences due to quarantining.
"I want to go back and just really thank our staff, our teachers, the parents, everyone that was involved with this whole process," at-large board member Talicia Richardson said. "Those numbers went down because of their due diligence of keeping their kids at home, washing hands. The counselors that had little things in place that a lot of parents don't realize that they did to ensure the safety of the kids. I spoke with the superintendent several times regarding the progress of these numbers going down. I'm very happy, and it's all because of the staff and their work to do this. ... This was not an easy decision for some of us. It wasn't taken lightly."