Nodaway Valley schools to require face coverings starting Tuesday

Nodaway Valley Community Schools Superintendent Paul Croghan shared with the Adair County Free Press a letter Monday that was distributed to students and staff indicating that the district is implementing a face coverings requirement beginning Tuesday.

“The Nodaway Valley School District has been experiencing an increase in positive COVID-19 cases in our district,” said the letter, signed by Croghan and school nurse Amy DeVault. “The new guidance for non-health care, non-residential settings say that quarantine is no longer recommended if a potential exposure occurs while both the infectious individual and the close contacts are wearing face coverings consistently and correctly.”

Until this point, Nodaway Valley schools have “highly recommended” that both students and staff wear masks anytime social distancing could not happen. Staff were required to wear masks beginning last week, according to a conversation the newspaper had earlier Monday with Croghan.

The mask mandate applies, according to the letter, anytime social distancing cannot happen.

Sept. 28, new quarantine guidance issued by the Iowa Department of Public Health were announced. It included:

• Under the new state guidance, those in close contact with a COVID-positive person will no longer need to quarantine for 14 days if a face covering was consistently worn by both people during the exposure.

• Household/residential contacts and contacts in health care settings will still have the 14-day quarantine recommendation.

• According to the guidelines, any type of face covering is acceptable, however, a face shield is not considered to be a face covering and quarantine is still required if one or both people were wearing a face shield only.

• People in quarantine may discontinue that quarantine if both people were wearing a face covering during the time of exposure.

• Only the infected person must go into isolation, while the close contacts should monitor their health.

• The requirements for isolation do not change for people that are actually sick or OVID-positive to isolate from others until they have had no fever for 24 hours and their symptoms have improved and at least 10 days have passed since their symptoms first appeared or since they had a positive COVID-19 test.

The change breaks with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, which recommends a 14-day quarantine for anyone who is in close contact with someone who has tested positive regardless of mask use.

Governor Kim Reynolds said in an announcement last week the change comes after a number of superintendents voiced their frustration with quarantine guidelines. She said district officials felt the guidance forced more students to quarantine than necessary.

The state looked at four school districts in Sioux County, which found the three that weren’t wearing masks were seeing more cases than the district that required masks.

Reynolds emphasized the new guidelines are not mandated in public schools, they are simply recommendations.

“The case investigation process tells us that increased cases in these areas aren’t, and I mentioned this last week, they aren’t really tied to a specific event or activity. Rather, as more people get back to life as normal, the virus is simply spreading from person to person during the course of normal daily activities,” said Reynolds.

Editor’s Note: The Associated Press contributed to this report.