Valley Center school district may drop mask mandate in response to Ranzau complaint
Acting on a complaint by a former Sedgwick County commissioner who wants to end mask mandates and social distancing in schools, the Valley Center school district has scheduled a vote for Thursday on whether to scrap its COVID-19 safeguards.
The board held a special hearing Monday on claims by former commissioner Richard Ranzau, one of the first parents locally to invoke a new state law that mandates a speedy hearing for anyone objecting to restrictions designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Ranzau told the board that the mask mandate and social distancing rules put in place in August are no longer valid because of recent drops in COVID infection rates.
He said Sedgwick County’s positive test rate is low — between 3 and 4% — and all teachers and staff now have access to vaccinations to protect themselves from the coronavirus that causes the disease.
He called the district’s policies “irrational” and said it’s harming children by causing them fear, nightmares and other mental impacts from being deprived of face-to-face contact.
“When we wear a mask we dehumanize ourselves,” he said.
Assistant Superintendent Mike Bonner, who heads the district’s COVID committee, defended school policy.
He said the infection rate is still high among children and that they should continue to wear masks for the final 37 days of the school year to protect each other and their families.
“Our school age kids are contracting the virus at a higher rate than others,” he said, citing state data showing the positive test rate for COVID at 8.97% for ages 10-14 and 7.58% for ages 14-17.
The district estimates that only about half its workforce has been vaccinated.
Bonner said out of 550 total staff, about 225 were vaccinated through the district’s vaccine clinic and an unknown number have obtained vaccination from the county clinic or other channels.
Part of Ranzau’s complaint is that he feels his son, a 17-year-old junior at Valley Center High School, is being deprived of his opportunity to build up his immune system by being exposed to childhood diseases. That, he said, will make children more susceptible to viruses as adults.
“If you continue wearing these masks, you’re inhibiting that natural God-given process of natural immunity,” Ranzau said. “I want my child to be exposed to all those things . . . It’s not just about the coronavirus, we’re inhibiting his exposure to all of these things that happen naturally and if we continue to do that long term, we hurt our children, we hurt ourselves.”
Bonner said the district is following the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and other health agencies that have found mask-wearing and social distancing to be effective methods to prevent the spread of COVID.
He also said masks substantially reduce the risk of having to keep children out of school for quarantine when a classmate tests positive for the coronavirus.
For example, he said, one of the district’s schools had two children test positive last week and “we only had to send three students home.”
About 50 people would be close contacts with the infected students, but did not have to be quarantined because they’d been wearing masks. The ones who were sent home may have been exposed, maskless, while eating lunch with the infected students, he said.
Bonner also cited new regulations at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that allow employees to bring unsafe-workplace complaints against employers who don’t take steps to limit the spread of coronavirus.
Ranzau said the changes at OSHA are political, because “we got a new president.”
As part of his request, Ranzau is seeking an end to automatic quarantines and testing for students who are exposed to the coronavirus but are not showing symptoms.
“I wouldn’t have any (mandatory prolonged) quarantines for positive patients, if they have a negative test at some point or their doctor says they can go back . . . or if they’re afebrile (don’t have a fever) for 24 hours,” he said.
Bonner countered “It’s not the flu, it’s COVID-19.”
COVID disease has claimed 581 lives in Sedgwick County and more than 550,00 nationwide since the pandemic took off about a year ago.
Bonner did recommend a partial relaxation of COVID restrictions on attendees at outdoor athletic events.
He said the district doesn’t really need to limit attendance anymore because spring outdoor sports don’t attract large crowds. And it’s safe for family groups to go maskless when they’re seated in the stands as long as they’re apart from other groups, he said.
He recommended keeping the mask requirements where groups gather in closer proximity, such as rest rooms and the line for concessions.
The law Ranzau brought his complaint under, called Senate Bill 40, mandates that anyone who feels aggrieved by COVID restrictions gets a school board hearing within 72 hours and a final decision within a week following the hearing.
On Monday, the board opted not to make an immediate ruling, but scheduled a second special meeting for 7 p.m. Thursday to give themselves time to deliberate.
The meeting will be livestreamed on the district’s YouTube channel.
This story was originally published April 5, 2021 at 2:48 PM.
