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They are waiting for guidance from Board of Health. <br /> Some are worried about after vacation when families are travelling. <br /> Going to look at data from pool testing. <br /> The town has mask mandates in public buildings and the School Committee wants to be <br /> consistent with the town's policies. <br /> The School Committee has a sub-committee that has looked at the State DESE policy and <br /> they have a new draft mask policy that they have forwarded to the BOH for review and <br /> comment. <br /> In the past, the board has stated that they wanted guidance from the State on COVID <br /> policies. DPH has given their guidance via the Governor and have relaxed the mask <br /> mandate in schools. Mr. Harrington thinks that DPH would have looked at the numbers <br /> with schools that had met the 80%vaccination rate and their number of cases statewide <br /> before they made the decision to remove the mask mandate. <br /> The State positivity rate is now at 5% that shows the spread is under control. Mr. <br /> Harrington expects Mashpee's numbers to be the same at the time of the meeting. <br /> Therefore, community spread is now low. <br /> The School has told the Board of Health that the sports and extra-curricular activities <br /> where kids are within 0-3' of each other have the largest rate of spread of COVID. <br /> Surveillance has always been the key to stopping the spread of the virus and the school <br /> has a testing program in place that will help with that but there are not enough <br /> participants. If the board feels that the surveillance can help with stopping the spread of <br /> the virus then a recommendation should be made to require the extra-curricular activities <br /> to participate in the school's testing program. Funding and supplies have been brought <br /> to bear to facilitate this. <br /> As the School Committee also mentioned that they wanted to be consistent with the <br /> Town's mask policy in public buildings, Mr. Harrington believes that due to the low <br /> community spread of the virus, it is time to end the requirement for mask use in the town <br /> buildings. <br /> Mr. Baumgaertel states that he personally supports the letter. It provides the school with <br /> needed back-up in terms of recommending that families participate. It is totally reliant <br /> on parents deciding to that. Within the athletics program we have seen positives come <br /> up, so it's not like it's not happening. And we've seen transmission between some of the <br /> students in the sports program. It's an opt-in program. To me it should be required for <br /> school athletics, but this is where we are right now. Only suggestion Mr. Baumgaertel <br /> would make is to change the 3rd paragraph where it states the Board of Health confirms, <br /> I would like to propose that we change the working to the Board of Health Strongly <br /> confirms. <br /> Ms. Patel comments students should actively participate or parents should be cognizant <br /> about having their students be tested in the pool system. Kids taking part in the pool <br /> testing has been very positive. <br />