SET High's plan regarding masking

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prin...@sethigh.org

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Mar 3, 2022, 2:36:21 PM3/3/22
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Dear Students, Parents, and Guardians,

 
As I am sure you are all aware, Governor Newsom recently announced that he is lifting the mask mandate for schools on March 12th while strongly recommending that masks still be worn.  He has left it up to the individual counties and then individual school districts to determine if masks should still be worn in those counties and/or school districts.  SET High is an independent charter school which means that it is up to me and ultimately the SET High Board of Directors on whether we follow the masking recommendation or make masking optional.  As the leader of the school, I will not be punting this decision to our Board of Directors and forcing them to make a decision during what will surely be a heated and contentious debate that will likely fracture our community and result in no one being happy.  I will give you one person (me) to revile or love, but I suspect that after a careful reading of this email you will all have a little bit of a bitter taste in your mouth, but ultimately come to realize that what I propose is the only solution that will keep our community together and allow us to move on from what could be an ugly fight.
 
I am intentionally not bullet-pointing this email because I think every word is important.  Please read it in its entirety.
 
I hope first, though, that you appreciate the impossible position that the Governor has put me in.  Regardless of how you feel about the Governor or his politics, the decisions that he made at the start of COVID were courageous and allowed our schools to focus on educating students rather than enduring endless battles between parents, students, and staff over COVID policies.  We were all given one bogeyman to hate or complain about, and his name was Governor Newsom.  Unfortunately, Newsom has now folded (as he eventually had to do) and has moved the decision-making down to the individual school district level where people like me now have to try to straddle the fence between two political extremes and countless legitimate concerns about personal safety, family safety, community safety, personal responsibility, and personal freedoms.  At some point the individual communities had to have the freedom to decide what was best for their schools, their children, and their staff.  The Governor has decided that that time is now, so here we are, finally forced to make a decision that is right for our school.
 
What I propose is that we follow a policy that I will call Common Sense Masking, a policy that most of us are following in our own private lives and one that most of our staff are following behind closed doors.  The idea behind Common Sense Masking is that we be respectful of those who still have legitimate concerns about COVID-19, long COVID, and Multi Inflammatory Syndrome of Children, we all carry masks at all times, and whenever we are in close proximity of someone who has a COVID-19 concern, we put on our masks.  Currently, when I am with a staff member who I know takes COVID seriously and who wears masks when in sketchy situations, I will go mask-free in my office when there is a safe distance between us.  If we are both huddled over the same laptop, we both put our masks on.  I am sure many of you do the same with your own co-workers and friends.  This is Common Sense Masking.
 
With Common Sense Masking, we will pay attention to the risks (San Diego County still has a risk level of High on the CDC COVID-19 Community Levels table), we will be considerate and respectful of those who have their own individual risks, and we will not question anyone's need for or desire for masking.  Students, if you are working on a project in close proximity with someone who requests masking, you will wear a mask.  Similarly, though, we will respect the rights of an individual (or a group of individuals) who is safely distant from others (the typical 6 feet) to not wear a mask or to temporarily remove a mask.
 
I believe in our community's ability to rally together around this.  I trust that our students will be respectful of one another and will be considerate of the individual wishes and concerns that we may all have.  I know that our students will be especially considerate of our high-risk staff members who may have health concerns, family health concerns, or who may be pregnant.  If the wishes of a staff member are to have students be masked in their classroom or masked when in close proximity to them, I know that our students and staff will respect that wish, and will do everything in our power to make sure that that staff member feels safe and unjudged in their own classroom..  If the seating options in a particular class do not allow an unmasked student to have a 6-foot radius between them and those students who wish to be masked, I know that the student will respectfully wear a mask in that particular situation.
 
The alternative is unthinkable.  All of our students have a right to feel safe at school and all of our staff have a right to feel safe in their workplace.  Our school cannot function without our staff and our school cannot function without our students.  We will all be considerate and respectful because that is the only way that we can stay united as a school and focused on the things that truly matter: learning and friendships.
 
With Common Sense Masking, our staff (any adult on campus) will wear masks when within 6 feet of students.  Our staff may choose not to wear a mask while lecturing, for example, but if they move close to a student to help them, masks will be worn.
 
So why not just leave the mask mandate in place as San Diego Unified has done?  There is no going back at this point unless the Governor imposes another mask mandate.  We have no legal capacity to enforce our own mask mandate and if we tried to do it based on goodwill, the many other jurisdictions that are allowing non-masking will lead to more and more students testing the waters with us.  Our staff would wind up being more focused on policing masking than educating and we would likely have a worse situation where no one is respectful of anyone's masking or non-masking wishes.  This would divide our school.  San Diego Unified has chosen to continue to enforce masking, as is their right, but I do not believe they will be able to do this successfully at the high school level without there being severe consequences to the culture in each of their schools.  I believe that our students will be respectful of one another and that we will ultimately have a safer environment because that respect will lead to students voluntarily wearing masks in risky situations.
 
I come to this decision as a personal proponent of masking (well, Common Sense Masking, really).  I am certain that the relatively light impact of COVID-19 on SET High has been a result of our considered approach to COVID precautions, including masking.  I personally had a daughter who had COVID-19 during the Delta variant, and no one else in our family contracted COVID, likely because of our careful wearing of masks and her isolation during her quarantine period.  I switched to a KN-95 mask at the start of Omicron and despite being sneezed on by, and working face-to-face with, at least 30 COVID-19 positive families during the month of January, I somehow managed to avoid getting COVID.  During the height of these close-contacts, I made sure to wear a mask whenever around my immuno-compromised mother.  I was less careful with staff members like Ms. Heath and Mr. McClendon who had similar risk levels as me.  This was Common Sense Masking.
 
What personally gives me comfort as a proponent of masking is that the latest scientific data shows that we are able to manage our own risk with our own masking choices.  While the risk for those who choose to wear masks will be greater if we ease the mask mandate and move to Common Sense Masking,  KN-95 masks and N-95 masks (of which we have plenty to distribute to all students and staff who would like one) do mitigate that risk.  Everyone should do their own research on this, but this article quotes a COVID expert from Harvard who claims "An N95 mask filters about 95 percent of airborne particles. But two surgical masks—one on me, one on you—filter only about 91 percent."  We urge anyone who is concerned about COVID risk to use one of our N-95 or KN-95 masks.
 
In addition, for those of you who are concerned about the risk of long-COVID, a legitimate concern especially since we have SET family members who are suffering from long-COVID, this article describes a study done in Israel that shows that the long-COVID risk for fully vaccinated individuals is the same after they have contracted COVID-19 as if they never had COVID-19.  Translation: there is no increased risk to long-COVID for those who are fully vaccinated.
 
Also, for those who are concerned about the risk of death, for fully vaccinated individuals, the risk of death from COVID is 1 in 1,000,000.  The best documentation of this oft-quoted statistic that I could find was from a transcript of February 2, 2022 White House press briefing where Dr. Walensky, the director of the CDC, states: "For those who were boosted, the average of weekly deaths was 0.1 per 100,000 people..."
 
And finally, closer to home, I am not aware of any unvaccinated students who did not contract COVID-19 during either the Delta or Omicron wave.  We should now have a very high level of immunity on our campus, whether it be through vaccination or actual illness.  We have dropped from 5 or 6 cases per week to 0 in the last two weeks.  Since nothing else has changed, this would seem to indicate that we are close to achieving herd immunity in our population.
 
For full disclosure, however, there is still a risk to even our young and healthy students, and this is why we are still taking COVID seriously, especially while the risk level in San Diego remains high.  You may have heard of Multi Inflammatory Syndrome of Children, a relatively rare post-COVID condition that affects some children.  We have a staff member who has a healthy, athletic, football-playing teenage nephew in San Diego who has been in the hospital for a month after contracting this as a side-effect of his COVID infection.
 
The risks are small, but the risks are real.  As our society begins to return to normal, we all need to be aware of the continued risk and be respectful of those who may have a higher risk.
 
The Omicron variant is on the decline and San Diego will likely soon be out of the "high risk" category.  Since San Diego is currently barely in the "high risk" category, it is expected that by March 14th the risk will be downgraded to "medium risk".    Assuming that there continues to be a downward trend in all of the COVID metrics for our county, SET High will no longer mandate masking on March 14th, but we do request that everyone still carry a mask and practice Common Sense Masking.  If however, there is a reverse in the downward trend and San Diego has an unexpected rise in COVID-19 cases now, or at any time in the future, we will strictly follow the recommendations of the CDC and/or the CDPH, which may include a return to mandatory masking.
 
As long as the CDC and the CDPH continue to recommend masking, we will recommend and encourage it in our school.  For those students who are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, masks will be required until their symptoms resolve, even if the student tests negative for COVID-19.  Note that in most cases, under current guidelines, those students would not be permitted to be in school anyway.
 
The end to masking in our school will ultimately occur when the CDC and the CDPH no longer recommend masking in schools.  I cannot predict when that will occur, but I know all of us are really hoping for a normal school year next year.  Please, please, pretty please!
 
As I reflect on this email before hitting the send button, I would like to make one final plea to our parents.  We have very different students at our school and we have very different teachers.  Please do not project how you think kids will behave based on your own experience in high school or on the portrayal of teenagers in movies.  Our staff is 100% united around Common Sense Masking because they believe in our students and they believe in the culture of our school.  Getting anyone to agree about anything during these super stressful COVID times is a small miracle, but it is really a testament to the faith that our staff has in our students.  We know them and we respect them, and we know that they respect us in turn.  I don't think that this solution could work in many other schools, but I do know that it can work here.  I know that I am opening myself up to criticism from all sides with this approach, and I am happy to have conversations with each of you (my moratorium on responding is now over!), for as long as necessary and at whatever times are convenient for you.  I urge us to please not take your fight to public forums (like our board meeting, for example) where there is a potential to inflame the situation and fracture our community.  I know there are parents on both sides of this issue who feel strongly that their position is correct -- I have heard the messaging from both sides, trust me! -- and this will not go well if we have a shouting match between the two sides.  Please use me as the punching bag and let me try to explain the opposing viewpoints.  What is most important is that the staff is in agreement and when we have a united staff we can make magic happen.  Please do not embroil them in battles that will ultimately just undermine our ability to provide the best education possible to our students.  I cannot stop anyone from speaking their mind at next Wednesday's board meeting, but please do consider if anything will be accomplished by speaking out, knowing that there is going to be someone on the other side who is going to be just as loud, just as vocal, with equally salient and science-based arguments.  The reality (I hope!) is that the arguments are really just about the timing, timing that is now in the weeks (certainly not more than months) timeframe.  The world will hopefully be returning to a post-COVID normal very soon, and that new normal will most likely not include mandatory masking except when deadly viruses (possibly new variants of COVID-19 or other) flair up.  Some will continue to wear masks when sick (thank goodness!), some may choose to wear masks during cold and flu season as a precaution to avoid annoying illnesses, but most of us will be mask-free and COVID-free, thankful that a devastating disease did not impact us too severely.
 
And finally, please know that our staff have been absolutely amazing throughout the pandemic and have gone far above and beyond what anyone could have expected of them.  Our teachers can't help but feel that the animosity sometimes directed at their profession is also directed at them, however supportive our parents actually are.  Please take a moment to let them know how much you appreciate them and support them during yet another trying time in this pandemic.
 
Thank you, everyone.  I hope that we will all rise above our personal differences and be respectful of one another as we move towards the next phase of COVID.
 
Respectfully, 
 
Dr. McCurdy

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