MERIDIAN, Idaho — West Ada School District announced it will extend its mask requirement through Oct. 8 in an update posted on the district’s website.
The mask mandate began Sept. 10, after a West Ada teacher in the district died of COVID-19, and after the district had initially allowed students to opt-out of wearing a mask in school. Over 36% of the district's 40,000 students opted out of the requirement before the district changed course and revoked the opt-out option.
The requirement applies to all students, staff and visitors.
“During this review process we were not able to use Central District Health data as CDH is experiencing a backlog of cases due to the excessive volume of cases,” the update said. “They are currently processing up to 1,000 labs a day, with about 5,000/6,000 labs waiting to be processed in the queue.”
Since Sept. 10, Crisis Standards of Care has been enacted in hospitals statewide. The community is still at a high level of transmission, the announcement said.
School staff are dedicating a “substantial portion” of their time to contact tracing and the district is facing a shortage of substitute teachers.
“West Ada experiences an average of 30-35% unfilled substitute jobs daily,” the update said. “West Ada School District will review the mask requirement prior to October 8 to determine whether the mask requirement can be lifted, and opt-outs restored, or if an extension in the mask requirement is necessary.”
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