Ohio County Schools To Relax Mask Mandate Based on Color-Coded Map | News, Sports, Jobs

Photo by Joselyn King – Ohio County Schools Superintendent Kim Miller shows some of the wooden items made by students at the Warwood School on a GlowForge machine, which both cuts and prints on the wood.

WHEELING — Ohio County Schools now only requires students and staff to wear masks when the county is designated orange or red on the state’s COVID-19 alert map.

Board of education members voted Monday night to approve a “compromise plan” that again changes its COVID policy for masks and quarantining of students exposed to COVID.

The new system corresponds with the Department of Health and Human Resources alert map, and becomes effective immediately. Decisions on mask wearing won’t be announced daily, but likely on a weekly basis based on the map, school district administrators said.

Ohio County was listed Monday as orange on the DHHR map, putting it in the second-highest risk category. Only 11 of the state’s 55 counties were better than orange or red on Monday’s map. Despite that, some at Monday’s board meeting — including board members David Croft and Molly Aderholt — removed their masks following the board’s vote.

Board members Aderholt, Christine Carder, Pete Chacalos and Grace Norton voted in favor of the compromise policy, while Croft voted against. He said he believes masks should only be worn when the school district is designated red.

Superintendent Kim Miller said administrators knew they had to achieve a compromise COVID policy because it was creating too much division and distraction.

“(Assistant Superintendent Rick Jones) and I, after the past few months of back and forth, have spent a lot of time talking about how important our school system is, and how this attention to masks and quarantine are not who we are as a school system,” she said.

“We want to share information with you about curriculum, and about things going on in our schools. That is where we would like to place our focus.”

Miller said after the last board meeting on Dec. 6, she, Jones and Amy Minch, attendance director for Ohio County Schools began to work on a compromise COVID plan.

Faculty Senate members, parents, students, administrators, nurses and Ohio County Health Department representatives all were invited to attend a series of meetings to discuss the proposal.

Among those attending the meetings were two doctors who spoke at previous board meetings on the COVID issue. One was Dr. Carter Kenamond, a radiologist at Wheeling Hospital who opposes mask-wearing. The second was Dr. C. David Burkland, director of the hospital’s emergency room, who says masks are necessary to prevent the spread of COVID.

In the end, the two doctors approved of the policy of requiring masks only when Ohio County is listed in the red or orange on the DHHR map

Jones said all parties agreed it shouldn’t be the school system’s responsibility to put forth a COVID policy, and that it should come from state officials. There was also concurrence that the controversy over COVID policies was hurting the school system and even dividing the students in the classroom

“That is not a good thing,” Jones said.

The quarantine policy for Ohio County Schools is as follows when the county designated gold, yellow or green:

If a person is exposed to COVID and they have no symptoms they do not need to quarantine. This applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

But the exposed person must wear a mask for the next 10 days, or test negatively for COVID on day 5 to stop wearing a mask after day 7.

If the county is designated as either orange or red, fully vaccinated people without symptoms still do not need to quarantine. Unvaccinated contacts who are asymptomatic also don’t need to isolate if they were wearing a mask.

If either the COVID positive student or one exposed to them were unmasked, the exposed student needs to quarantine following health department guidelines.

The students have options for quarantine. First, they can decide to get tested after day 5, and if the test is negative they may return to school on day 7.

They may select an option to not be tested and return to school on day 10. There is also a longer 14-day quarantine option available that does not involve COVID testing.

Aderholt and Croft proposed an amendment to the new policy passed Monday night that would have only required the wearing of masks when the school district was designated red. The measure was shot down by a vote of 3-2, with Norton, Carder and Chacolos voting against.