By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno Valley Middle School in Nickerson-South Hutchinson USD 309 is mandating masks for its students as of Tuesday.
"We're looking at each building," said Superintendent Curtis Nightingale. "We're determining based on the number of quarantines we have in that building, whether or not we need to go to masks mandatorily in that building. Our main issue isn't really positive cases. Our issue really is the quarantines."
Nightingale isn't sure that the current quarantining strategy is the right one in the long term, either.
"Sending people home for ten days at a time, financially, I just don't know that, you know, a lot of people can afford to do that," Nightengale said. "I know I can't and I know our staff can't and so, when you look at that as it trickles down to students, they can't afford to be out of school for that period of time over and over and over every time they are exposed to someone who got sick."
There are serious academic consequences to missing that much school and the state legislature has made it extremely difficult to let students learn from home.
"On a case by case basis you have to have your school board analyze that particular situation," Nightingale said. "Then they have to approve an exemption for that student. If you can imagine, if we've had 50 kids in one building that have been quarantined for the 10-day period, I have that many exemptions I now have to write up and have the board approve and then that goes on to the next level, which then it goes on to the state board for their approval and you can see how quickly that can become overwhelming for a system."
That's why some districts, like Wellington earlier this year, have made choices to close their buildings for an incubation period rather than try to wade through that much red tape.