February 3, 2022

Email sent to LSR7 Parents & Guardians. Editors Note: the vote was 5-2 with Murdock and Allen voting “nay”.

Good evening, LSR7 Parents and Guardians:

At a special meeting held this afternoon the Board of Education voted, 5-2, to extend LSR7’s indoor mask requirement until Feb. 24, the date of the Board’s next regularly-scheduled meeting. Masks are required in all indoor R-7 facilities through that date.

The Board’s extension of the district’s mask requirement is accompanied by the district’s adoption of new contact tracing protocols that the Jackson County Health Department now allows for districts with universal masking.

Because the district will continue to mask, starting this week school officials will only contact trace COVID-19 cases when clusters of positive cases occur in what the health department considers high-risk settings, including indoor sports and lunch. We will also continue to contact trace any cases in medically-fragile classrooms.

Outside of the situations described above, LSR7 will no longer be sending home students or staff who previously met close contact/exposure criteria. However, we will continue to notify families when positive cases have been identified within their child’s grade level (elementary) or classroom (secondary), and we will continue to provide district and building data on our weekly dashboard.

This new guidance does not change stay-at-home requirements for COVID-19+ students or staff members. Positive individuals stay home for up to 10 days but have the ability to return to school after five days if symptoms are subsiding. Students and staff who are presumed positive because they are presenting with COVID-19 symptoms must stay home for at least five days or provide a negative PCR or antigen test conducted in a lab setting to return to school.

Again, while LSR7 will only contact trace positive case clusters in high-risk settings moving forward, we all can play an important role in mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on our school community by monitoring for symptoms and staying home when symptomatic.

Thank you for your cooperation and support,

Katy Bergen

Executive Director of Public Relations