By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Buhler USD 313 Superintendent Cindy Couchman said Wednesday the district is going to be firm on its requirement of masks at Prairie Hills Middle School through October 17, this is regardless of vaccination or previous infection status.
"We treat students who have had COVID within the last six months the same way we do if they have a vaccination," Couchman said. "They can still come, but they still have to wear a mask. Vaccinated students and those who have had COVID can still transmit the virus. We treat those cases the same way as somebody that's had a vaccination. We ask them to come to school and just wear a mask just the same way they are. If they don't want to wear a mask, they have the option of just keeping their students at home during these next few days."
The goal is not to have infections get to a point in any of the other buildings that they have to be added.
"We have one other building, I think, that has five active cases," Couchman said. "We'll have a couple roll off tomorrow and drop it back down to three. The high school has gone up and down a little bit. Right now, I think they only have two active cases. At one point, we had, I think 50 kids testing in the morning at one of our elementary buildings, but that was only for like a couple days. It wasn't for a six day stretch. We knew that one group was going to come off."
If an individual student is out, that of course has an effect on that student, but if a staff member is out, that creates another set of issues.
"We're not going to do the whole district," Couchman said. "We're just going to address the buildings where we have quite a few cases. We do that for lots of reasons. One is, we've got to keep staff and people in the building and keeping it staffed. We can't have our staff getting sick. We don't have substitutes, so this is also a way to keep kids coming to school every day."
According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment's COVID-19 student dashboard, USD 313's enrollment is 2,181 students.