The Perry Community School District will be soon be formulating anti-virus policies for the fall term after the Iowa Department of Education issued guidance Thursday for reopening K-12 schools.
The state guidance does not require students and teachers to wear face coverings, undergo health checks or observe social distancing recommendations.
“It is too early for me to make any statements regarding plans for this fall,” Jennifer Lansing, PCSD Middle School and High School nurse, told ThePerryNews.com Friday. “We are finding out new/different information daily. We are working closely with the administrators. We are following leads from Dallas County Public Health, CDC and the Department of Education.”
Lansing said the district’s anti-virus policies will be finalized “later this summer.”
PCSD Superintendent Clark Wicks and PCSD School Board President Kyle Baxter did not return calls for comment Friday.
The novel coronavirus remains active in Iowa, where 704 people have died and 27,686 have tested positive for the virus as of Friday, June 26. Thursday also saw all high school baseball games at Principal Park in Des Moines cancelled after a staff member tested positive for the virus, and at least 10 Iowa State University athletes and 12 University of Iowa athletes tested positive in recent weeks.
Mike Beranek, president of the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), the teachers union, said in a statement Thursday the state had “done a disservice in releasing deficient guidance,” which he said “threatened the health and safety of Iowa students, educators and school staff.”
Beranek said the students and staff in Iowa’s 327 public school districts and 119 accredited nonpublic schools “deserve nothing less than our full and focused attention to their health and safety.” He called on local school districts “to create your own guidelines mandating face coverings, physical distancing and other safety protocols.”
Calling the state’s guidance “obscene,” ISEA spokesperson Jean Hessburg claimed the state’s plan does not comply with guidance issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Responding to the criticism of Thursday’s guidance, the Iowa Department of Education released a statement late Friday, saying “further clarification” of the guideline was needed. The department said it “will release additional information in the near future.”
Beranek said the “backlash” against Thursday’s guidance “was loud and clear. The Department of Education needs to come up with guidance based on four basic principles: health expertise, educator voice, access to protection and equity.”
Several parodies of the state guidance appeared that satirized the brevity and vagueness of the state guidance.
