Haines school district will keep its COVID policies in place. That was the consensus reached Tuesday by the school board as the community comes out of another wave of coronavirus cases. KHNS’ Corinne Smith reports.

 

COVID-19 cases surged in Haines last month reaching as high as 43 active cases in a town of about 2,000 people. There were at least four cases on campus and dozens of close contacts have had to quarantine since the start of school.

Masks are required on campus, and the school provides rapid asymptomatic COVID testing for students, staff and some families that homeschool their kids.

Haines senior Avery Williamson is the student rep on the school board. She says student athletes have been tested twice a week because they often travel and she says that likely contained wider outbreaks.

“​There was the positive case and cross country, that was pretty stressful, because I was in the middle of that,” Williamson said. “We were worried about our season, just our safety, but our mitigation and kept us all safe. And that was really remarkable. And I’m confident that we’ll continue with our indoor sports, which are a little higher stress because they’re inside.”

Superintendent Roy Getchell says he feels the current COVID protocols, like masks, are working and doesn’t want to see that change. 

“We went through some uncharted territory since the start of the year,” Getchell said. “And some things that we haven’t done before, we’ve really tested our mitigations. And while not perfect, I don’t know that anything is perfect during COVID,  I feel really good about how things went. How we were able to work through it, keep our students safe, keep things continuous.”

The Haines cross country team is competing at the state championships in Anchorage this weekend, after a full season of traveling to meets around Southeast. Wrestling started September 29, and basketball season is starting soon.

The superintendent says so far no closures have been needed. He says he’s proud that Haines’ 251 public school students haven’t had their classes disrupted. 

“We didn’t have to cancel school, we didn’t cancel practices, we didn’t canceled anything,” Getchell said. “We did have students that were in quarantine we worked with their families on but those were not school related quarantines, except for a couple of them students during an athletic situation that we worked out. So even with all those positive cases, because of the mitigations we had in place, we’re able to continue to move forward.”

Younger people are catching COVID, though. The largest number of cases identified in Haines have been among those 20 and younger. That’s according to state public health.

Among children and youth ages zero to 20, there were reportedly 42 positive cases, or about 23 percent of all Haines cases since the start of the pandemic. That’s out of 184 cases total, since March 2020, reported as of October 6, 2021. 

Haines positive cases since March 2020, provided by Juneau Public Health Center via email

That’s similar to the statewide average, where Alaska’s youth make up about a quarter (web: 24 percent) of all COVID cases, according to the state’s dashboard. And similarly, cases among that age range spiked in mid-September to the highest numbers seen so far in pandemic, according to the state’s graph by age here). Officials report kids have made up a growing number of the state’s COVID cases since the Delta surge, as those under 12 are not eligible for the vaccine. 

Only those over 12 can be vaccinated. And of that slice of the population, 73% have been fully vaccinated in Haines. 

In Haines during the month of September (September 1 – 30th), cases for ages zero to 20 more than doubled from 17 to 40 positive cases. But further information about positive cases by age group or household have not been made public. 

Third grade teacher Sophia Armstrong says faculty had been nervous about an outbreak in the schools. And she urged the district to keep its precautions in place. 

“I was worried that my class was going to fall like dominoes with how contagious the delta variant is,” Armstrong said. “And so I’m just really glad because only the children who you know, only the children who came to school with it, left school with it, and and it’s just really lovely to have full classrooms again, and know that we’re all safe and healthy.”

The Haines’ teachers union also weighed in. Haines Education Association President Kristin White read a letter on behalf of the union that applauded the work of the district’s Health Advisory Committee which brings together the district’s administration with local health providers.

“We are fortunate to work in a district that values both safety and continuity of learning.”

It was in this atmosphere that Haines Superintendent Roy Getchell recommended that the board keep its COVID protocols in place for at least another month. .

“Because I feel like we’re not we’re not out of the woods yet. We want to keep things going. We’ve got momentum learning, we’ve got momentum with activities, we want to maintain that,” Getchell said.

In a related development, the federal Centers for Disease Control announced Friday it will be reviewing vaccine eligibility for kids ages 5 to 11. That could mean vaccines could be available for school aged children under 12 as early as next month. 

On Friday, Haines reported zero new positive COVID cases, and a total of four active cases in the Chilkat Valley.