Salem School Board President Rodney Brough said a new plan to help keep students in school will be revealed on Tuesday, Sept. 7 and that mask-wearing would be part of the strategy to keep Covid absences at a minimum. 

“I think our plan will support masks,” said Brough. “We want a safe environment for them and for our staff and faculty.”

He said the plan would mimick the concerns of the public, who stated during the meeting that if masks were able to control the numbers of students who had to quarantine, then masks should be worn. 

The Salem Community School Board met in a special meeting Monday evening at 6:30p to discuss a plan to return students to school. 

They are currently in a virtual education mode through Sept. 6 and will return to school in person on Sept. 7. 

The administration made this move on Wednesday, August 25 due to the high absentee rate, which the state caps at 20 percent.  For any school that has a rate higher than 20 percent due to any sickness, the school must temporarily close. 

According to Brough, Salem Schools were close to 27 percent absenteeism. 

“It would have gone higher,” if the school would have gone another day,” said Brough.

Several hundred students were absent due to contact tracing, which is one of the Centers for Disease Controls guidelines to try and mitigate the spread of Covid-19. 

Current guidelines for close contact include anyone who has been within three feet of a COVID-19 positive person for at least 15 minutes during a 24-hour period.

According to the Indiana State Department of Health, any individual who is a close contact will be required to quarantine for 10 days unless the individual has either been fully vaccinated or the individual was at least three feet apart and wearing a mask properly. 

According to Adam VanOsdol, Communications Specialist/Content Strategist, with the Indiana School Boards Association, schools have leeway in two main areas, which are outlined in the above document:

1. If schools require face masks in classrooms, they can contact trace to three feet rather than six feet. (This is important, because many schools have found that classrooms aren’t large enough to ensure six feet of space between desks; with masks, three feet of space between desks is enough to avoid having students identified as close contacts needing to quarantine)
2. Three options are available when contact tracing identifies a student as a close contact: 1) 14 days of quarantine at home; 2) 10 days of quarantine at home, return to school on day 11, and wear a face mask on days 11-14; 3) 7 days of quarantine at home, return to school on day 8 with a negative test result, and wear a face mask on days 8-14.

Although the board did not actually discuss their plan or vote to implement one, they did allow members of the public to speak and mirrored their concerns to get students back to school.

Aaron Howey, Chris Hunt, Matthew Magner, and Bill Suvak all spoke to the board with two similarities — make students wear masks if that keeps them in school and all noted the importance of keeping students in class.

Hunt, a parent of two Salem students said that he believed contact tracing was not working and was not used in the business world. 

“I talked to quite a few parents who have expressed…in the private industry, we really don’t do contact tracing, because it really doesn’t work,” said Hunt.

“To prove this, the two kids who have Covid-19 on the football team, they basically are quarantined. They are out [of school] because they have Covid-19. The other 72 kids….none of them are sick. To this day, none of them are sick. When you look at the numbers of the Covid-19 cases vs. quarantine…do you have those numbers? Covid cases vs actual quarantine” asked Hunt.

Brough said he didn’t have those numbers but thought it was somewhere around five percent of the students out of school in quarantine vs. actual students who had Covid-19.

“Administration feels it’s a little higher,” said Brough. 

“So we’re taking 400 kids and quarantining them because of 12 kids [that have Covid-19]?” asked Hunt. “When you shut down these schools, that’s what makes these kids not learn. Looking at last year, was it a successful year? No. My kid came to me and said he learned nothing last year.”

Hunt proposed a situation where a fictional student named Johnny gets sick and a friend, Jack, has sat beside him, is identified through contract tracing as a “close contact.”

“Then Jack goes home too?” Asked Hunt. “Both of them have masks on then do jack and Johnny both go home?” 

Brough answered “No.”  

“There’s your answer,” said Hunt. 

“The one thing with Covid we cannot control is quarantine,” said Brough. “We don’t make those guidelines. But how we mitigate quarantine, we can. And we’re not here to say masks work or don’t work. But they will stop quarantine numbers.”

Magner agreed with getting students back to school. 

“If the mask is what’s going to keep that number down, then I’m for it, he said. “I’m not here to talk about vaccinated, unvaccinated, mask or no mask. What we have to do is open the school up. I care what happens in Washington County. That’s why I come back here. If we can get it opened up and it’s a mask thing, then mask it is.”

Suvak spoke in support as well.

“What we also know is that our youth, need to be in school,” he said. “They have been hurt and they are being hurt. I don’t know how you can make up for what’s been lost. I appreciate what you are going through and I support you. It’s very very important to do whatever is possible to get the kids in school.”

Board member Mark Day said the school’s plan had been reactive, but that it needs to be proactive. 

“The thing may not be put to bed yet. We need to be a little quicker to react,” he said. “That’s why we wanted to get people’s opinions. To minimize it is the best we can do at this point. The more support, the more we function as a team — the kids are watching us to see how we react to these things. It’s very important that they see us band together to support one another. I’m very impressed and very proud that Salem can do that.” 

Board member Becky Humphrey asked about how the lunchtimes will be handled. 

Administrator Brent Minton said he was working with Salem Middle School Principal Kevin Albertson and High School Principal Troy Albert to adjust lunch procedures. 

Board Member and Vice-President Becky White explained that the board had earlier granted Minton and Assistant Superintendent Kim Thurston emergency powers to act without the board when Superintendent Jon Acton took an extended medical leave in July. 

White said Monday’s meeting was the first by the board to address the recent Covid spike. 

“In the beginning of this year — It wasn’t just our corporation [that didn’t initiate a mask mandate],” she said. “Nobody wanted to make the mask mandate because so many parents were not for it and had issues with it. And we had a stretch there when numbers were low in July. We didn’t think things would escalate until the winter. Our numbers did go higher than what the health department thought. In that, we opened school up and it is what it is. We have tried the non-mask mandate and we tried to do it that way, but we can see that it’s not the way to go…people need to understand our point of view and our concern…everyone on this board…our concern is for the safety of the children and our staff. That’s what we were voted in to do and to make sure everyone stays healthy and not to be reckless in any form.”

Both Salem and West Washington Schools are meeting this week to approve plans to get students back into the classroom after moving to a virtual atmosphere last week due to an increase in the number of absences due to Covid-19.

West Washington’s board voted to move to virtual classes on Tuesday, Aug. 24, and return to school on Sept. 7.

Salem Schools administration announced last Wednesday that students would move to virtual classes on Thursday, Aug. 25, and return on Sept. 6. 

Salem’s School Board is meeting tonight at 6:30p at the Salem High School Presentation Room. 

West Washington’s board will meet Wednesday, Sept 1 at 7p. 

East Washington Elementary School will be moved to a virtual format on Tuesday, August 31. They are expected to return to school on Sept. 7. 

Indiana schools set a new record last week, reporting more new cases of COVID-19 among Hoosier students than at any previous time in the 19 months of the pandemic.

More than 5,500 new cases were reported among students in Monday’s update of the state’s COVID-19 school dashboard.

The dashboard also reported 257 new cases among teachers and 355 new cases among other school staff members.

While nearly 1,000 of those cases date back to earlier weeks, last week’s total was still far greater than any week in the pandemic thus far, providing further evidence that the virus is now spreading in schools to a greater degree than it did during last school year when more stringent mitigation procedures were in place. 

Last Monday, more than 1,300 new cases were reported among K-12 students — the highest one-day total schools have reported since the state started asking schools to report the information more than a year ago. 

Since August 1, there have been 388 new cases of Covid-19 reported in Washington County and 5 new deaths. 

In July, there were 89 new Covid-19 cases in Washington County, with most of those coming in the last two weeks of the month. 

Last year, Washington County had 13 cases of Covid in the whole month of July 2020 and that increased to 148 cases when school began in August, with those figures rising to 432 in November, 572 in December and 485 in January 2021. 

According to East Washington Superintendent Dennis Stockdale, the school had an absentee rate last week of 8 percent. 

However, according to the Indiana State Board of Health’s website, West Washington High School reports 13 students with Covid and the elementary school reports less than 5. 

At Salem Schools, the high school shows 7 students with Covid and less than 5 at Bradie Shrum and Salem Middle School. 

According to the State of Indiana’s Department of Education, anytime there is a 20 percent or more absentee rate at any school in a corporation, the IDOE, and local health departments have to be notified and the school has to close until the absentee rate improves below 20 percent. 

STATE REGULATIONS

According to 512 IAC 1-2-1, public and accredited nonpublic schools are required to develop a local attendance system for reporting symptoms and health outbreaks. The school nurse is required to report any known or suspected reason for the excessive rate of absenteeism directly to the superintendent or designated administrator. 

Per 512 IAC 1-2-2, public and accredited nonpublic schools are required to report to the local health department and the state attendance officer the percentage of student absences when the percentage of students absent from a school is equal to or greater than 20% of the enrolled students. Reports are not required on days immediately before or after a school vacation day or a scheduled instructional day that is canceled due to any weather-related emergency. Schools are to complete this report on any individual school that reaches the 20% absenteeism threshold and is not dependent on the entire school corporation reaching this threshold. 

The rule also states that if students are quarantined, are not ill, and are able to attend school virtually or by distance learning, they would be counted as Virtual Due to COVID, which means they are present.

These students are not included in calculating a school’s absentee rate.

Only those students who are ill and are physically unable to attend school either in person or virtually would be counted as absent. 

ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES: 

• The 20% rate is calculated and reported per individual school, not per school corporation. 
• The 20% absenteeism rule is for reporting purposes only. 
• There is not a certain percentage that dictates a school’s response, such as automatic school closure. Once a school reaches the 20% absenteeism rate and has reported this information to both the LHD and IDOE, the school and LHD should collaborate on the next steps depending upon the type of illness causing the absenteeism. 

Sheriff Brent Miller is alerting older residents and their loved ones about a scam targeting senior citizens. A Washington County woman was recently a victim of this scam, but thanks to knowledgeable bank staff, was not financially impacted.

“This grandparent scam has been around for quite a few years. There’s a reason for that – scammers have successfully used it to cheat people out of their hard-earned money,” said Sheriff Miller.

The sheriff’s department was contacted this week by First Harrison Bank. The spokesperson said a Washington County woman came to the Floyds Knobs branch seeking a loan to bail her grandson out of jail. The woman believed she had received a call from her grandson, who told her he probably sounded funny because he had broken his nose.

The “grandson” said he had been taken to the hospital after being involved in a drunk-driving crash and then said he was handing the phone to his attorney. The “attorney” told the woman she needed to send him $6,000 to represent her “grandson.” The woman told the man she couldn’t get that much money. When he asked how much she thought she could send, she said $1,000 and proceeded to go to the bank to obtain a loan to pay it. 

Bank personnel realized this was a scam and educated the customer. They encouraged her to call her grandson and once she did, she learned he was safe and at home.

“First Harrison Bank deserves credit for having alert personnel who immediately realized this for exactly what it was – a scam targeting a vulnerable customer,” said Sheriff Miller. “Unfortunately, these scams are a part of life and all too often, are successful in taking advantage of people.”

Sheriff Miller advises residents to never give out personal information if a caller requests it and to always verify a caller is who she or he claims to be. “You can always call the sheriff’s department at 812-883-5999 if you ever have any questions,” he said. “It’s always better to be safe than sorry.”

Yesterday morning, Trooper Jeremy Cox had just left the Indiana State Police Post and had turned north on Woodyard Road from Vernal Pike in Bloomington when he observed suspicious activity by two men in a red Dodge truck parked alongside a black GMC SUV that was off the roadway and had been left abandoned. 

Trp. Cox observed a cloud of dust coming from the GMC as Nicky D. Wright, 52 years old from Martinsville, was reaching into the fender well area of the vehicle.

A second suspect, Richard P. Vanskiver, 63 years old from Martinsville, was sitting in the Dodge truck, that was parked next to the GMC.

As Master Trooper Mark Clephane and Senior Trooper Kent Rohlfing arrived to assist, the investigation revealed inconsistencies with the two men’s stories, damage consistent with the theft of catalytic converter along the presence of the tools involved in the alleged theft.

Both men were transported to the Monroe County Jail on the following charges,

• Auto Theft, Level 6 Felony (2 counts)
• Conversion, Class A Misdemeanor
• Criminal Mischief, Class A Misdemeanor

Arrest photos may be obtained from the Monroe County Jail

Lt. Paul Bucher, Commander of the Bloomington District, commended the work of the Troopers as this type of crime has spiked recently, “We continually see this crime occur within our community as the prices of precious metals rise and our Troopers are well trained in detecting the behaviors of suspects that prey on other people’s misfortunes.”

Lt. Bucher also stated, “We would like to remind the public to be vigilant of their property and report any suspicious activity alongside our roadways.” 

All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until, and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.