Cd'A schools stay in 'orange'

COEUR d’ALENE — After more than an hour's worth of discussion Monday, members of the Coeur d'Alene School Board could not come to a consensus about changing the COVID risk category for the district.

With no motion to change, the Coeur d'Alene School District will remain in the moderate "orange" classification. This means half of the students will continue to attend in person on Mondays and Tuesdays and the other half of the students will continue to go in person Thursdays and Fridays. Everyone participates in remote learning on Wednesdays and the days of the week they're not in school in person. Masks are required, no visitors are allowed in school buildings and social distancing measures are in place.

"If I'm looking at trending, even though we've trended within the yellow, we've trended up within the yellow," Vice Chair Jennifer Brumley said. "If I'm just being really prudent and responsible and trying to make sure that we aren't going to open the floodgates, I feel like I'm headed in the orange direction and keeping us where we're at.

"I hate to say that," she continued. "I had 100% anticipated walking in today, believing we were in yellow and believing that we were going to be having kids in five days and expecting that, but I just can't make a decision today that says we're going to look at trending up for either days or weeks, having information that puts us into orange, and then saying, 'OK, we're just going to put them all together and see what happens.'

"This sucks, I'm just going to say that," she said. "This sucks."

The special meeting took place less than a week after the district experienced its first positive COVID case at Skyway Elementary, which was reported one day after school resumed. School board members were reluctant to decrease restrictions to "yellow" with 20 active local COVID hospitalizations and seven people in critical care. During the meeting, one more hospitalization was announced, bringing the number to 21.

Even since Friday, when information from health officials was updated and entered in the board packet, Kootenai County has had an increase in positivity rate from 4.3% to 5.8%.

"We are seeing a small uptick, not a huge uptick at this point," PHD director Lora Whalen said via video call. "We're also seeing some cases associated with schools in the different counties."

District epidemiologist Jeff Lee, also on a video call, reported that Kootenai County was running at 11 cases per 100,000 at the time of the meeting. He said Kootenai County has been fairly stable the past two weeks.

"We are starting to see a trend of increase in the number of cases being reported," Lee said. "This has been occurring over the last two to three weeks that they've been going up."

He said 20- to 30-year-olds account for 21% of all the cases.

"We're not seeing a significant increase in the children, but we are seeing an increase in the category where some of your teachers would be, in the 20- to 30-year age group," Lee said.

Chairman Casey Morrisroe said he's supportive of moving into the "yellow" classification. In "yellow," or minimal, masks would still be required and social distancing would be practiced, but school would be in person five days a week.

"With the numbers we've heard today, kind of updated stuff today, it is alarming," Morrisroe said. "We purposely said we're going to look at data over a period of weeks, that we're not going to react week to week, or day to day, on, 'OK now we're yellow, now we're green, now we're red,' jump all over, right? We want to look at a period of data.

"With flu season coming around, we may not get a chance to go to yellow if we continue to wait and wait and wait, and then we could just be in orange forever," he said. "Being in school is important for these kids. Our parents want it, our community wants it, our students want it, our teachers want it."

The board is expected to meet again next week for another special meeting, date and time to be announced.

SIDEBAR

About 500 people watched the live stream of the special Coeur d'Alene School Board meeting. Nearly 1,000 comments were posted by early afternoon. Many of those who posted implored the district to go to yellow. Others vented frustrations and some bickered back and forth while expressing their opinions.

"The mental health of the kids is WAY more important than sharing germs. This is absolutely insane!" wrote Mary Bierwagen Lyons.

"My 5th grader was doing kindergarten work on the first day, Not good! Open up," Krystal DuPuis posted.

"I motion you all pull your kids outta school and we take back our tax money," Brett Surplus wrote.

"This is such a waste of time. They already know they aren’t going to move to yellow. They are too “afraid,'" Heather MacKenzie posted.

"They aren’t afraid — just wanting to make sure they can make an informed decision based on information and data, and can keep kids and staff safe. And keep schools open," Brinnon Garrett Mandel wrote.

"Covid positive test = more money. Why wouldn’t they be diagnosed!!!" Carianne Dolan posted.

"Shocking the behavior on this FB thread. Covid-19 is a big concern but I am now worried about the role models these kids have at home! Adulting???" Mandel wrote.