Valley Center schools keep mask mandate, reject Ranzau grievance under new Kansas law

A Wichita-area school district has rejected a grievance filed by a former county commissioner that sought to revoke the mask mandate and other pandemic protocols.

The Board of Education for Valley Center Schools USD 262 voted 7-0 during a Thursday night meeting to keep masks mandated.

School board members voiced concerns that doing away with mask requirements now would potentially result in COVID-19 spread and quarantines that take students out of classrooms, away from sports and keep them home from prom and graduation.

“Nobody likes to wear masks,” an unidentified school board member said during the meeting. “Kids don’t like to wear masks, teachers don’t like to wear masks. But from what we’ve seen, masks have helped keep (down) the spread from this virus. I think we’ve done a great job doing what we’ve done, and I’d hate to see us stop that right now.”

Richard Ranzau, a district parent and former Sedgwick County commissioner, filed a grievance last week after a change in Kansas emergency management law allowed aggrieved people to force the school board to hear their case.

Ranzau sought to “open all schools and school related activities without any attendance limitations or mandates for masks or social distancing.”

He also wanted the district to “recommend but not mandate” vaccinations, hand washing, not touching your face, coughing into elbows, staying home if sick, wearing a mask if you want to, social distancing if you want to and using targeted policies for “medically fragile” students and teachers.

During an initial hearing on Monday, Ranzau called the district’s policies “irrational” and said they harm children by causing them fear, nightmares and other mental impacts from being deprived of face-to-face contact. He also said his son is being deprived of his opportunity to build up his immune system by being exposed to childhood diseases.

The new law, known as Senate Bill 40, requires school districts to use the least restrictive means possible in order to provide a safe learning environment during an emergency. Challenges to district protocols must be heard within a short period of time. The grievance can also be filed with the district court, which also must come to a speedy decision.

After the meeting, Ranzau declined to comment on any potential court filings, but promised further action, whether from him or other parents.

“I suspect they’re going to continue to defend the indefensible until the end of the school year, but I don’t think the parents are ready to surrender,” he told The Eagle.

If he or someone else chooses to file a civil case in Sedgwick County District Court, a judge must hold a hearing withing 72 hours and have a decision within a week of the hearing. School officials appear confident their policies would be upheld in court.

“The district was most restrictive in the fall, due to cases in our community, cases in our schools and a lack of staff available to maintain safe operations,” Superintendent Cory Gibson said. “Currently, we are the least restrictive environment since reopening our doors last fall, as a result of the lowered risks.”

In rejecting Ranzau’s requests, the school board did make some modification to existing policies. Masking and other mitigation practices will continue while some policies will be relaxed.

People at outdoor school activities may remove their masks if they are social distanced, but would have to put them back on when not social distanced, such as visiting the concession stand at spring sporting events. Capacity will not be limited.

Pre-kindergarten students, who typically have smaller class sizes, will be allowed to remove their masks when permitted by the teacher. School staff may remove masks when no students or visitors are around and if they are social distanced from coworkers.

Gibson said quarantine guidelines have been loosened, but are still based on everyone complying with wearing masks.

Another section of state law grants the local health department the power to isolate and quarantine people, an unidentified speaker said during the meeting, which was broadcast via YouTube with limited in-person seating. The law bars schools from admitting people with infectious or contagious conditions.

“These regulations cannot be overridden by a local school board. We have home rule, except in these areas,” the speaker said.

Wearing masks allows students to stay in the classroom, even if they have had limited exposure to the coronavirus.

“We have had instances in the last couple of weeks where if we had not been wearing masks, entire classrooms would have been sent home because of these quarantine rules,” the speaker said.

Instead, only students who sat at the same lunch table were sent home. Violating quarantine laws could open up the district to penalties and lawsuits.

During the early days of the fall surge, the Valley Center High School football team forfeited a playoff game due to multiple COVID-19 cases on the team. Shortly thereafter, the district moved high school classes entirely remote.

Now, case rates among children are relatively high in Kansas compared to adults, even though coronavirus levels are much lower than they were in the fall. Nationwide, a new surge in COVID-19 cases apparently fueled by variants has had an increasing effect on the young.

School board members on Thursday built a consensus that keeping students in classrooms is their top priority, even if it means wearing masks.

“My hesitation with removing masks is ... having to send 30, 40, 50 kids home with one case,” an unidentified speaker said. “We just had another case pop up just yesterday in the district. It continues to happen. It’s still around. The most important thing, in my opinion, the benefit of kids having their butts in the seat in the school building every day is more important than them having to wear masks.”

Ranzau called that an excuse.

“It’s interesting to know that they did not dispute the idea that all the data is on our side with respect to repealing the mask mandate,” he said. “Instead they just changed their excuse to saying that if they did this, they would have to quarantine a bunch of people. But they have an email from Sedgwick County saying they are not longer required to quarantine asymptomatic students.”

Last month, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed SB 40 and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed it. The school section received less attention than provisions allowing the Legislature to revoke the governor’s mask order.

“I think Senate Bill 40 was not a very well thought out law to put in place, in my opinion,” an unidentified school board member said. “I don’t think they thought it through in Topeka, and I don’t like how they’re making this all come to fruition.”

“My heart aches for the children,” Ranzau said. “There’s no reason to make them continue to be in school in this environment. They don’t want it and in fact the teachers don’t want it. Meanwhile all around us, more schools are ending their mask mandates, and the children are absolutely loving it. Why can’t the kids in our district have a normal last nine weeks?

“Unfortunately politics is getting in the way, and we know many of the school districts have a tendency to want to support Gov. Kelly’s agenda, and I think that might be part of what’s going on here.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2021 at 9:21 PM.