If mask mandate doesn’t get it done, what’s next for Sedgwick County, Wichita schools?
A Sedgwick County commissioner signaled Tuesday that the county may have to take stronger action to contain the coronavirus with the start of the school year about a month away.
In a weekly update on COVID-19, commissioners got a grim report from County Manager Tom Stolz: rising coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, percentage of positive tests — a litany of data trending in the wrong direction.
“I don’t want to shut anything down, but I want my child to go to school and be safe,” said Commissioner Lacey Cruse, who’s pushed for stronger action than the county’s largely voluntary response to virus prevention. “But the reality is we’re going to send thousands of children back to school — and we shut school down when our cases weren’t even as high — and now we’re trying to send them back?
“I’m very concerned about my child. I’m very concerned about the rest of my teacher friends, I’m concerned with the para(educators), the administration of these buildings.”
Schools and how to help them reopen safely was the primary topic at the county’s staff meeting Tuesday.
Cruse and Commissioner David Dennis both expressed concern that the county’s spending plan for $99 million of federal COVID-relief funds sets aside only $2.5 million for educational institutions in a county with more than 150 schools and 85,000 students.
Dennis said he’s talked to local superintendents and Randy Watson, the state commissioner of public education.
“The biggest concern that they’ve got right now is how are they going to open up the schools safely in another month,” Dennis said. “I’ve always felt a little bit uneasy about the size of that (budget) we’ve got for education right now.”
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said the county needs the schools to open.
“That’s something that concerns all of us, both for children, for their mental health and then also economically, (with) so many single-parents households in Sedgwick County, predominantly in (USD) 259. Being such a large school district our economy can’t work without parents being able to have their kids in school.”
Stolz, the county manager, said the county could adjust the COVID-19 budget if that’s what the commission wants to do.
“If you want to move that money around, we surely will,” Stolz said. “At this point I think the state needs to give us some overarching plan on education . . . we’re all in the same boat in trying to get our schools open.”
He said the hope is that a mask mandate currently in force will help bring the situation under control.
The city of Wichita, representing about three-fourths of the county population and the bulk of its commercial businesses, passed an ordinance July 3 requiring face masks in most public settings.
Five days later, Dr. Garold Minns, the county health officer, issued an order mandating masks — although unlike the Wichita city version, it doesn’t include any penalties for violations.
Cruse said she’s afraid it may not be enough.
“What happens when or if these cases don’t drop?” she asked. “What is Dr. Minns prepared to do? What is this commission prepared to do? You know, we only have so many tools in our toolbox and if those tools don’t work, I think we should be realistic about the cases that are increasing and how we get them to drop if masking isn’t adhered to in our community.
“We’ve got to start thinking about what we’re going to do as the Board of Health if these numbers don’t decrease. I think you all know that I’m pretty prepared to make a hard decision, but I wonder what the will of the commission would be if these numbers don’t decrease.”
Stolz said the county administration wants to give the current orders some time to work.
It takes the coronavirus five to 14 days to blossom into symptomatic illness, so actions taken now won’t show up in the data for two weeks to a month, he said.
“Nobody’s comfortable with the numbers going the way they are, schools, businesses, we’re not, you’re not,” he said. “We have to do something to try to get these numbers to change or at least settle . . . Dr. Minns made an effort last week to try to change that. We’ll have to give a little bit of time to see how it shakes out.”
The county is starting to develop its own capabilities to do COVID-19 testing and process results locally instead of sending samples to a state laboratory in Topeka or to out-of-state commercial labs, which are overwhelmed.
Stolz also said the county needs to make disease-control regulations strong enough to protect public safety without over-regulating, which causes other problems.
The question is: “What’s the proper regulation that allows us to get back to school, allows our economy to grind and allows people to have as normal a life as possible while we’re in the middle of this story, which is coexistence with the virus?” he said.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 3:16 PM.
