INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana schools have received an incentive from the governor to require face masks in classrooms in hopes of slowing down the number of COVID-19 outbreaks among students.
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb issued a new statewide executive order on Wednesday, Sept. 1, that eases quarantine requirements for students if all children and adults in the school were wearing masks throughout the day. The revised order comes as many Indiana schools have seen COVID-19 outbreaks and the state’s vaccination rate remains stubbornly low.
New state rules allow schools to let students deemed as close contacts with someone infected with COVID-19 to remain in school “if all adults and students in the classroom correctly and consistently wear well-fitting masks the entire time, during the educational school day.” Students would have to quarantine only if they developed COVID-19 symptoms.
Many schools in Hancock County currently already require masks when not eating or engaged in extracurricular activities after accumulating hundreds of quarantines in the opening weeks of the academic year. That includes all of Southern Hancock schools and four out of the five in Mt. Vernon, although two of those remain virtual until Sept. 7.
Wes Anderson, director of school and community relations at Southern Hancock, said he’s not sure how much the executive order will affect the school corporation. Southern Hancock’s motivation for requiring masks was that it reduced the radius for contact tracing from 6 feet to 3.
“And since that is a pretty achievable distance for us in almost all classroom situations, the last couple weeks, honestly we haven’t been contact tracing that many kids,” Anderson said. “… I don’t know if that changes a lot for us protocol-wise, but I’m sure that it’s a bit of a relief for parents to know their kids are not going to be contact traced in the classroom.”
Schools will still have to contact trace in situations where masks aren’t used like lunch and many extracurricular activities. And although quarantining is no longer required in situations where masks are worn, schools still have to notify those who have been exposed to someone infected with COVID-19 and report it to their local health department.
It’s too early to tell whether the executive order will motivate Southern Hancock to continue requiring masks, said Anderson, who pointed out the order lasts 30 days.
“Our goal is to try to keep as many kids in school as possible, and I think this helps us do that by a significant measure,” he said. “We’ll have to play it by ear and see how things go, but this is a really, really good thing for keeping those healthy kids in school, which has been our goal from the beginning.”
The order isn’t triggering any mask requirements at Eastern Hancock at this time, Superintendent George Philhower said.
“Our number of positive cases has been pretty minimal compared to other schools and has been contained to our elementary building,” he told the Daily Reporter in an email.
Greenfield-Central won’t be making an immediate change either.
“We will continue to contact trace since all students and staff are not currently wearing masks,” G-C superintendent Harold Olin said in an email. “We will be discussing this new option with the school board in the next few days.”
Mt. Vernon was still working on messaging to share with its families regarding the executive order at the Daily Reporter’s deadline Thursday, Sept. 2.
Holcomb said the COVID-19 spread in Indiana was regrettable but avoidable.
“To the skeptics or unbelievers or deniers, I would just plead to look at the facts, to look at the numerical data that shows we can all stay safe if you get vaccinated,” Holcomb said.
About 46% of Indiana residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the 15th-lowest rate among the states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. State health officials, meanwhile, say 98% of recent COVID-19 hospitalizations are for unvaccinated people.
The coronavirus risk ratings updated weekly by the Indiana State Health Department now puts nearly all counties in the higher risk categories for COVID-19 spread as severe illnesses are straining hospitals at levels months earlier than last winter’s surge.
Those updated ratings placed 13 of Indiana’s 92 counties in highest-risk red category, with 75 counties — including Hancock — with the next-highest orange rating. Only four counties were in the lower-level yellow category. A month ago, just one county was listed as red and 62 had the lowest-level yellow and blue ratings as the highly contagious delta variant was hitting the state.
Holcomb remained firm against reinstating the statewide mask mandate that expired in April, saying it was “loud and clear” that the public wanted local officials in control of such actions.
Several school boards around the state have faced vocal — and sometimes misleading — opposition to mask requirements.
Even so, 54% of Indiana’s public school students were under classroom mask requirements as of Wednesday, and at least 60 schools have switched to virtual learning for at least one week because of high numbers of students and staff in quarantine or isolation since the start of the school year, according to the Indiana School Boards Association.
Holcomb said those who have avoided vaccinations need to get the shots.
“That is having an adverse effect on others, not just potentially yourself, but others and our economy and our kids’ education,” Holcomb said. “So, I would just ask to think beyond yourself.”
The governor’s new executive order, which runs through the end of September, reinstates the state’s work-search requirements for those receiving welfare benefits and the one-week waiting period before the payment of unemployment benefits begins.
The current COVID-19 surge has boosted Indiana hospitalizations to about 2,300 patients — double the number of patients from two weeks ago and at a level that hospitals didn’t see until early November last year.
Some Indiana hospitals have announced delays in some non-emergency surgeries, but the governor’s new order does not impose any restrictions on surgical procedures as Holcomb had done during last year’s coronavirus surges.
Tom Davies of The Associated Press and Mitchell Kirk of the Daily Reporter staff contributed to this story.
