Dear RSU 71 Students, Staff, and Families,

The U.S. and Maine Centers for Disease Control will soon be issuing an updated SOP (standard operating procedures to prevent COVID-19). It is widely known that the CDC is considering making mask-wearing "optional" rather than "recommended" in schools. As it stands now, if we did not require masking, we would be required to quarantine more students and staff, unless we also discontinue contact tracing. Contact tracing is the process of identifying and notifying individuals (or their families) who have had close contact with someone infected with COVID-19.  Some see the value in contact tracing as it may help inform families' decision-making to know if their student has been in close contact with someone with COVID-19. Our students and staff members need to be in school as much as possible and safely. We have tightly adhered to CDC guidance throughout the pandemic, and doing so has kept us safe.

We have information that these changes to the SOP will likely come in the first two weeks of March. (CDC is said to be waiting to see if there is the usual uptick in the disease as we've seen after every other vacation.) Maine CDC Director Dr. Shah has said that individuals who choose to wear high-quality masks (such as KN 95 and N 95) will continue to be protected from others, even if others are not wearing masks. RSU 71 has ordered a supply of these masks using state funding set aside for this purpose.

The metrics used to determine community safety are also changing -- from tracking positive case counts, which are still very high, to tracking hospitalization and death rates, which have gone way down. We've all seen that the omicron variant has been much more contagious but also much milder than earlier variants; many positive cases are asymptomatic or only mildly sick. Today, there is only one covid patient hospitalized at Waldo General Hospital, and only one at the Pen Bay Medical Center.

We would appreciate knowing your thoughts about masking and contact tracing to help inform our decision-making. Please take a moment to complete this very short survey by Friday, February 25.


Thank you,  Mary Alice McLean