By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Savannah School District is lifting the mask mandate put in place for two elementary schools and the middle school tomorrow.
The mask requirement was in place for the John Glenn and Amazonia Elementary Schools, as well as the Savannah Middle School.
District spokesperson Jess Gillett says the decision to lift the mandate came earlier than expected on Friday, as the district looked at the number of students who had tested positive, that would be returning to school on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"Meaning that our positive rate was really going to drop later this week," Gillett tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And so, district administration felt like it was appropriate to go ahead and lift that mask mandate for now."
The district had initially planned for the mask mandate to be in place for at least the next two weeks after the three schools had over five-percent of students on the campuses testing positive.
Gillett says the decision also came after consulting with local health officials.
"You know, we really want to work closely with them, we know education and they know public health, and so we really want to rely on their knowledge," Gillett says. "And that's really what they're seeing, is that the newer variant of the virus is coming on quickly. It's spreading very quickly, but then it's also not sticking around as long."
Gillett says for now the districts approach will stay the same monitoring the number of students that are testing positive and having to miss school.
Gillett says people were receptive about the mask mandate put into place, but like most things schools have done during the ongoing pandemic, it's hard to make everyone happy.
"So, any decision that we make, you know, we've got half of our population that's not happy about it and the other half thinks it's great, thinks we should be doing a little more," Gillett says "But the thing about having so many of our kids sick right now, is that it's hard to argue with putting another layer of protection in place."
The school district will reconvene in February and will discuss if any changes need to be made to the district COVID policy.