HOWARD — East Knox students exited school buses and walked to class as fog rolled over the district buildings Friday morning, marking the fourth day of the 2021-22 school year.
At the same time, approximately 50 protesters gathered along the school perimeter on Coshocton Road to demonstrate their objection to the district’s indoor mask mandate, which took effect Friday. The protesters included East Knox parents, relatives and children of various ages who skipped school to protest.
The mandate comes after the district started the school year Tuesday with a mask-optional policy and identified positive COVID-19 cases among students and staff within the first three days of the school year.
District superintendent Steve Larcomb notified parents, students and staff Thursday evening of the policy change.
All of Knox County’s school districts had initially made masks optional for the start of the school year, against the recommendations of Knox Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Ohio Department of Health.
East Knox is the only district to change its policy thus far, but one Mount Vernon school, Wiggin Street Elementary, has a mask mandate because of a village ordinance mandating masks indoors.
Positive cases, close contacts
As of Friday morning, a total of four people, three students and a staff member, within the East Knox Local School district had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus since the start of the school year Tuesday, said Larcomb and Knox County deputy health commissioner Zach Green.
Three East Knox students — two elementary students and one junior/senior high student — and one staff member tested positive. As a result of these positive cases, 22 students were identified as close contacts and ordered to quarantine as of Friday morning, Larcomb said.
However, Green said Friday Knox Public Health had not yet received the final report of confirmed cases from the Ohio Disease Reporting System, which tracks lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases for health agencies statewide.
“The numbers are still coming in,” Green said.
Most of the quarantine orders this week happened Thursday, however some happened as early as the first day of school, Larcomb said.
East Knox’s district website states a mask mandate may be reinstated district-wide if average student attendance rates fall below 85% for five or more school days in a row. A mask mandate may also be reinstated if/when there are additional clarifications from health officials, the website reads.
“We have not reached that attendance threshold yet,” Larcomb said. “However, the rapid rise in close contacts required to quarantine clearly demonstrated to us that we needed to go ahead and put the mask mandate back in place, because our main responsibility is to educate our students and keep them in school and keep our doors open.
“So this really isn’t about the positive cases as much as the associated students that are close contacts. The students that had to quarantine would still be in school today had they been wearing masks at the time of potential exposure.”
Larcomb made the decision to put the mask mandate in place in consultation with the board of education, he said.
Landra Houston, a parent protesting Friday, took issue with how the mandate was relayed to the community.
“To do it the evening before they go to school is just a slap in the face, one,” Houston said. “Two, having to tell your child that they have to do that the night before they go to school — it was devastating. He didn’t want to go to school today, and he’s not going to go to school.”
Houston’s son, a fourth grader at East Knox, did not attend school Friday and participated in the protest. Houston said she does not yet know when she will have him return to school.
East Knox parents John and Stephanie Kimball said at the protest Friday they were frustrated the district did not provide the case numbers or school buildings of the people who tested positive when announcing the mandate.
Larcomb’s announcement Thursday did not state case numbers. It stated East Knox staff identified 15 close contacts Thursday morning alone.
John Kimball also said Friday morning he wanted an online learning option for his children, so they did not have to wear masks. Following the mask mandate announcement Thursday, East Knox has opened up a temporary online learning option for parents who do not want to send their children to school in-person because of the mask mandate.
Online learning
East Knox had the option to create a separate online learning school for the 2021-22 school year under Ohio’s 2022-2023 biennial budget. Under this legislation, the online school has to have a separate information retrieval number and students must be assigned to the online school for the purposes of reporting and school funding.
East Knox did not create an online option in response to this legislation, nor did any other Knox County district.
Mount Vernon City Schools is the sole district offering online learning, but the legislation does not apply to MVCS’s model, which is categorized as a blended learning model the district has been offering since 2016.
However, East Knox students in grades seven through 12 have the option to temporarily attend school online through the APEX program, which the district also bought and used last year, Larcomb said.
This program is intended to serve as a temporary substitute for students who need credit recovery or have a medical issue that requires them to stay home. Larcomb said the district is now allowing students to opt into it given the change in mask policy.
“It’s been an option since the beginning of this year in terms of using it for credit recovery or if you had a medical issue — that part of it is not new,” Larcomb said. “What is an additional enhancement is because we’re back with masks, we do consider this as a temporary situation where parents have that option.”
Students who opt into the program will have to remain in it through the semester in order to receive credit, Larcomb said, however there is no deadline as to when students must opt into it.
“We don’t have a hard deadline for when students need to have made that choice, however they do need to understand that and realize that the longer they wait the more behind they’ll be in the online program when they do enter it, because they have to go back and start from the beginning,” Larcomb said, explaining that the APEX program does not correlate with the in-person learning schedule.
The temporary online learning option is only available to students in grades seven through 12.
“Young students especially, they need to be in school,” Larcomb said.
The crux of the argument: parent choice
Other parental objections to the mask mandate among protesters Friday centered around the idea of parent choice.
East Knox parent Candy Jepsen said she supported East Knox’s original mask policy that let people choose whether to wear a mask indoors.
Jepsen said she thinks people should be able to choose, and then accept the consequences.
Mary Ann Kauila, parent of elementary and high school students at East Knox, also said she thinks whether a student wears a mask should be a parent’s choice.
“This is ridiculous — 7 hours that the kids have to wear masks,” Kauila said. “I wear a mask when I have to go to the store and I can’t do it. I can’t handle it.”
Vickie Slonaker, a grandmother of East Knox students, also emphasized her belief in parental choice for masking when explaining why she decided to protest Friday.
“I oppose anybody that makes decisions for the parents rights and for what needs to be done for their children,” Slonaker said.
East Knox had followed the parental push for choice in its initial mask policy, but the rise in COVID-19 cases and quarantines has disrupted learning, warranting a change in policy, Larcomb said.
The argument over parent choice is not unique to East Knox.
The village council in nearby Gambier passed an ordinance earlier this week mandating mask-wearing indoors for public places within the village, which includes MVCS’s Wiggin Street Elementary.
Village officials cited the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, Knox County’s 37% vaccination rate and students soon returning to school as factors in their decision to introduce the ordinance.
Before the council vote, parents of Wiggin Street students brought up parental choice in both arguments for and against the mask mandate.
For example, Wiggin Street parent Jené Schoenfeld said masking decisions have implications beyond the individual.
“To speak to this issue of parent choice, I guess one of my major concerns around that is that if this mask mandate wasn’t passed, and parents choose not to mask their children in school, you’re making a choice for my child because the germs that unmasked children have, they’ll make my child sick,” Jene Schoenfield said. “So I’m not convinced about this idea of parent choice because it is a community issue.”
Repercussions
In terms of East Knox’s mask policy, Houston and Slonaker also questioned Friday what the repercussions would be if they sent their children/grandchildren to school without a mask.
“What I want to know is if I send (my child) into that school or that classroom without a mask, is he going to be expelled?” Houston asked. “If I attempt to send him into schools without a mask, time and time again, can he be expelled?”
Larcomb said if students come to school without a mask, they will be provided one.
“If they refuse to wear a mask, then we’ll deal with that as a discipline issue,” Larcomb said.
When asked more specifically about how the student would be disciplined, Larcomb said refusal to wear a mask would fall under insubordination.
East Knox’s junior/senior high student handbook for 2021-22 defines insubordination as a student failing to comply with the directions of teachers, student teachers, school aides, bus drivers, principals or other authorized school personnel. The handbook also states, “teachers are authorized to make any rules to their classrooms and study hall which may aid in the efficiency of the class.”
The district’s 2021-22 elementary handbook does not include details about insubordination.
Insubordination could result in an out of school suspension, according to East Knox’s junior/senior handbook. Other examples of discipline referrals for insubordination include violating school dress code and the cell phone/electronic device policy.
There is no definitive timeline as to if or when the mask mandate will be lifted.
“It continues to be a fluid situation,” Larcomb said. “We’ll handle it day by day, and week by week.”
Larcomb said the main aspect the district plans to track as the school year progresses will be the quarantine rate.
“If the quarantine rates do indeed go down, that would indicate that the mask policy is working,” he said.
“At the end of the day, our goal is to keep students in school.”
Herald's Appliance, a local staple in Knox County since 1952, proudly sponsors the Knox Pages education section.
