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Superintendent Video Update: Masks Recommendation 2.18.22

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Please check out this short video message from Superintendent Dr. Kenny Rodrequez. In this video, Dr. Rodrequez discusses the district's decision to go from recommending not requiring masks in response to the KCMO mask mandate expiring.

Show Transcript

Hello, everyone. Kenny Rodrequez, Superintendent of Schools. Once again, trying to provide you as much information as we possibly can. There's been a lot of information going on and a lot of things that you may have seen in the news, particularly about the mask requirements. Kansas city recently let their mask requirement expire. That was the one that we were still following in terms of in schools. Therefore, we now, as a school district are able to make that decision on our own and determine what is in the best interest of us and our staff and students. Right now, what we're tracking with our departments and the health department, and everybody that we've talked to is an 85% decrease in case  rates over the last four weeks. This is very, very good news. We're also seeing the lowest case rate that we have seen since last summer in July. Based on all that information and what we have seen the last several weeks and the very steep decline in case rates, we are now going to be moving towards a recommend, not require in terms of masking.

I know this is going to be very, very different. This is the first time in two years almost, basically since the beginning of the pandemic that we have not had a requirement in terms of masks. Therefore, we will be still recommending it. Again, don't mishear me. We will be recommending that everyone continue to wear masks, but they will be able to choose whether or not they want to continue to do that or not. At the same time, we're also going to be moving towards updating our isolation guidelines to match with the CDC. The CDC came out just the beginning of January and changed their guidelines and they shortened that timeframe for isolation. We will be matching that. We'll send you more information and give you the specifics. Some of you may not notice any difference, but we wanted to make sure and update you on that. We'll also update our website and may make sure that we continue to have everything in place that we need to.

One last piece is that transportation is still under a federal guideline in terms of masking. Therefore, your children are still going to have to wear masks on our buses. We will see whether the feds continue to update that and extend that, or whether they let that lapse as well, but we'll make sure and update you on that as well. Again, we'll still have a requirement in terms of our buses for all of our staff and our students, but we'll move to a recommend, not require on masking throughout our schools for everything else. Once again, we'll continue to keep you updated. The next question is usually, are we ever going to bring masks back? Is it possible? 100%. We don't know what's going to happen in the future. Just like we didn't see some of the other things happening, we don't know what's going to happen in the future.

We will monitor case rates. We will see what's happening not only in the county, in our city, but our schools. And it's very possible that comes back. But again, it will be based upon data. It'll be based upon what we're hearing from the recommendations and we'll make sure and keep you updated as best we possibly can. Thank you much. If you have questions, let us know, contact your school administrator, contact us here at Central Office. We'll get you information as quickly as we can. Thank you so much.

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Superintendent Video Update: Masks Recommendation 2.18.22

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