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PALMER — On Friday, nearly three-quarters of the schools in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District required students and staff to mask to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission and outbreaks.
On Monday, none did.
As of that day, masks became “strongly urged” but not required in any schools operating in the “yellow” zone -- experiencing outbreaks or increased viral transmission -- under a new policy announced late Friday by the superintendent’s office.
This week, that applied to 34 schools, including all three large high schools. No schools fell into the more urgent “red” operational category that prompts building closures. Masks are recommended at another 12 schools with limited cases over the past two weeks.
The shift sets Mat-Su apart from other large Railbelt districts including Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks. Spiking case counts in Anchorage prompted the Anchorage School District in mid-January to extend a mask requirement indefinitely. The other districts require masks when cases climb.
[Alaska’s COVID-19 case rate still leads the nation as hospital staffing remains a persistent issue]
The omicron variant has pushed new case levels to record highs in Mat-Su within the past few weeks. The region’s sole hospital, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, reported just over a quarter of all patients tested positive for COVID-19 as of Monday.
The district’s decision reflects omicron’s high transmission rates but generally less severe illness, Mat-Su schools superintendent Randy Trani said in an interview Monday.
It also comes after teachers reported increasing tension with parents over masking policies and schools recorded higher absenteeism at schools with mask mandates.
Parents point out that while their children are wearing masks at school, few other local places require them.
“It puts staff members in a really tenuous spot where they’re the point of the spear on mitigation efforts -- this is the only spot in the community where it’s happening,” Traini said. “That was damaging to staff-parent relationships which is damaging to student growth.”
The new policy drew sharp criticism from Dr. Thomas Quimby, emergency department director at Mat-Su Regional, who called the district’s decision to move away from masks a “travesty” during such an unprecedented surge.
Quimby, whose children attend Mat-Su schools, said it’s true that omicron is less severe and makes it more reasonable to trend toward normalcy.
But masks, especially during times of high spread, help minimize disruption to learning, sports and other activities as a “very easy intervention” with significant effectiveness and few downsides, he said. “Even if the severity of illness is lower, lots of kids and teachers are missing school which impairs learning.”
[Mat-Su doctor: ‘Stand with me over a patient taking their last breaths’]
Mat-Su, a conservative-leaning Republican stronghold, holds among the lowest vaccination rates of any region in Alaska at just over 40% of residents fully vaccinated. The statewide average is just over 60%.
Community opposition to masking was “a portion” of the reason for the change, Trani said. A survey at the start of the school year showed that families were split fairly evenly on optional masking. That shifted to about 54% in favor in a survey this month.
Immediate reaction to the change was divided if the messages that came to headquarters are any indication, he said. “We have some people who are ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ We have some people who are, ‘I can’t believe you did this.’”
Several Mat-Su school board members have openly criticized masking in general and expressed skepticism over the authority of public health officials in schools.
The decision to lift masking requirements was not made by the school board, however, but by a health advisory team that meets daily, Trani said. That gives the district the flexibility to act quickly if measures need to change, he said.
On the Kenai Peninsula, where the political makeup resembles Mat-Su, the school district continues to follow a policy similar to the one Mat-Su just ended.
Face coverings are optional unless a school has numerous COVID-positive staff or students, high absenteeism or other metrics, according to district spokeswoman Pegge Erkeneff. Then the schools move to universal masking for 10 days, to be revisited and ended or extended.
As of Monday 17 of 42 Kenai Peninsula schools required universal masking.
The Mat-Su district’s health advisory team continues to monitor COVID-19 cases daily, in consultation with Mat-Su Public Health, Trani wrote in his email.
State public health officials say COVID-19 is everywhere in the Mat-Su community right now and schools are just one part of that.
Health officials continue to “highly recommend masks” as one of numerous ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19, said Theresa Ruzek, regional nurse manager with Mat-Su Public Health.
The Mat-Su district will continue to allow students and adults who test positive for COVID-19 to return to school after day five, provided they are masked for the remainder of their 10-day quarantine regardless of their school’s operational zone.
Trani in his email called omicron “a step toward more normalcy for our district ... A more transmissible variant that is less serious has the potential to increase the general population’s immune response to future infections.”
He said Monday that the district had hoped to implement the change at the start of the year after vaccines became broadly available but wanted to monitor omicron’s progress for a few more weeks.
The district health team will reinstate mitigation measures if necessary, Trani said. That includes monitoring any new variants that might produce more severe illness.
“I let other superintendents know we were going to make this change this week,” he said. “I had different superintendents from around the state (say) ‘OK, we’re going to be watching because we want to move that direction as well.’”