Bend-La Pine School Board urges state to ease COVID-19 rules, cites ‘needless over-quarantining’

All seven members join in letter to governor, schools chief

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – All seven members of he Bend-La Pine School Board have sent a joint letter to Gov. Kate Brown and Oregon Department of Education Director Colt Gill, urging them to ease what they consider overly burdensome student quarantine requirements, saying they are far too stringent for the current situation.

In the letter, sent Wednesday, the school board said the district has been successful as the first large district in Oregon to bring all students back to in-person learning, with “possibly 1 or 2 suspected instances of in-school spread out of nearly 18,000 students.”

“With masks and physical distancing and other health and safety measures, we have confirmed what studies have shown – that schools are one of the safest places for students and not where significant spread is happening,” they wrote.

But “due to community spread, cases are being brought into our schools, and this is leading to mass quarantines, which are disrupting school and student learning to an almost untenable situation,” they added.

The school district’s online dashboard shows 129 cases connected to the schools in the past 28 days, among a total student population of nearly 17,500. Of those, 24 were at Summit High School, 23 at Bend Senior High and 22 at Mountain View.

“Although quarantining is an important part of a public health response to a pandemic, (we) believe that we are needlessly over-quarantining our students, leading to our biggest disruption of in-person schools in Bend-La Pine Schools,” the letter continued.

As of now, about 800 Bend-La Pine students are in quarantine due to possible exposure to students with confirmed COVID-19 cases. With teachers teaching full-time in person, the school board said they cannot also provide quality learning experiences for students home due to the quarantines, “leaving these 800 students with almost no academic instruction for 14 days.”

The Oregon Health Authority and ODE guidelines appear to be the strictest in the country, they said, “resulting in many more students requiring quarantine than is likely necessary.”

Among other points, they say quarantining “shouldn’t be required if you are vaccinated, don’t have any symptoms or have recently had a confirmed case of COVID-19.”

And they said “close contacts” definition for quarantine should be reduced from six to three feet, to match the latest physical distancing guidelines. “If students are approved to be within three feet of each other, quarantining shouldn’t be required for contacts within six feet,” they wrote.