Keeping parents in the dark about COVID-19 in West Ada School District is a mistake

Ignorance is not bliss in the West Ada School District.

School board members in Idaho’s largest school district voted 3-2 to stop sending notifications to families whose children have been exposed at school to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Trustees who opposed the notifications said the district was stoking fears and adding to the stress families were feeling.

Stress or no, parents should be notified.

If you’re a parent who doesn’t believe in the seriousness of COVID-19, how it’s spread or the efficacy of masks, then turn your notifications off. Feel free to automatically move them to your spam folder or automatically delete them.

But many parents in the West Ada School District still believe in the science, believe in the seriousness of the spread of the coronavirus. Many of them may have young children at home, or live with elderly relatives or someone who is medically vulnerable. They have a right to know if their child was potentially exposed to COVID-19.

It is better to be criticized for informing parents than to be criticized for not informing them. Assuming parents don’t care to know will only come back to bite you in the end.

We can’t help but think of situations — such as an outbreak of lice, chickenpox or measles — that sometimes occur in schools. Does it cause stress? Yes, but the idea of not informing parents of an outbreak in school is unimaginable.

School districts and parents are always talking about more parental involvement. Keeping a COVID-19 exposure a secret is the opposite of involving parents.

“We’re feeding into that fear,” board chair Rusty Coffelt said, referring to exposure notifications and the district’s COVID-19 dashboard. “We have reached a point, in my opinion, (that) we’re doing more harm than good.”

Actually, COVID-19 is doing the harm. Emails or other messages informing parents of a student’s exposure do no harm.

Notifications have been increasing because COVID-19 cases have been surging. Idaho’s seven-day average has hit about 2,800, with nearly 4,000 new cases reported on Jan. 27.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that masks are optional in the West Ada School District, a decision made after Thanksgiving break.

There is much less need to notify others of a COVID-19-positive student if everyone in the class is wearing masks. Since they are optional in West Ada, everyone in that classroom needed to get pinged about a possible exposure.

Further, under guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who have been exposed but are asymptomatic don’t need to quarantine, as long as they’re wearing masks. The simple fact is that having children wear masks would slow the spread of the coronavirus, so you’re likely to have fewer positive cases to begin with.

Board member Lori Frasure said the frequent notifications weren’t necessary now, but the board might need to revisit the issue when virus transmission in the community was lower. But bringing back notifications when it’s not as much of a problem makes no sense at all and shows that their decisions are based on incredibly faulty logic.

If the district wants to reduce the number of notifications of COVID-19-positive exposures, maybe the solution is to bring back a mask requirement to limit the cases, like other school districts are doing, such as the Caldwell School District.

If your “check engine” light keeps going on, the solution isn’t to just disable your “check engine” light. The solution is to find out what’s wrong with your engine.

West Ada school board members picked the wrong course of action on this one.

This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 9:26 AM.