The Cobb Board of Health adopted a statement Tuesday urging schools to follow Centers for Disease Control guidance on mitigating against COVID-19, including masking of all staff, teachers and students over the age of 2.
The eight-member appointed board, called to an emergency meeting late Friday, voted 6-0 to approve what it called a “position statement” for public and private schools in the county.
The statement, read before the vote by chairwoman Dr. Carol Holtz, also encourages all eligible persons in Cobb (age 12 and older) to get vaccinated, and supports a “multi-pronged approach to protect students and staff.”
Cobb’s 14-day average of 845 cases per 100,000 people is several times above the “high community spread” threshold of 100/100K.
During the meeting, health officials noted that Cobb is experiencing “extremely high” transmission due to the Delta variant, and that pediatric case numbers and hospital admissions of children have increased dramatically.
It was clear from comments by board members and Dr. Janet Memark, the director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health, that masks were the primary reason for the meeting, and especially regarding the Cobb County School District’s policy.
The health board cannot issue mandates or require policy changes.
Cobb is among the few school districts in metro Atlanta without a mandatory mask policy. Marietta City Schools mandated masks in late August.
“One child’s death is not worth not wearing masks in our schools, public and private,” health board member Wyman Pilcher III said, echoing the comments of several of his colleagues.
They included Cobb Board of Commissioners chairwoman Lisa Cupid, who called the current COVID-19 surge in the county “one of the most troubling issues of our time” that “could do grave harm to our community.”
Abstaining from voting was Cobb superintendent Chris Ragsdale, who emphasized during the nearly hour-long meeting that the district was following seven of the eight recommended CDC school-related protocols.
Absent from the meeting, which was viewed via Zoom by more than 800 people, was Marietta superintendent Grant Rivera.
“We are doing seven of the eight,” Ragsdale said, stressing that correct usage of masks, especially by elementary school-age children, is a challenge.
Ragsdale—who with Rivera is a member of the health board by virtue of his position—also said the statement read by Holtz was not the text he had received prior to the meeting.
After it was sent to him, he said he didn’t feel comfortable voting for something he hadn’t had a chance to read.
Ragsdale said the Cobb school district—with 107,000 students and 20,000 more teachers and staff—strongly encourages masks and vaccines, and appreciated updated quarantine provisions from Cobb and Douglas Public Health.
Since July 1, there have been 3,744 confirmed COVID-19 cases among students and staff in Cobb schools, representing 3 percent of the district’s population.
“Ninety-seven percent are COVID-free,” Ragsdale said.
For each of the last three weeks, nearly 1,000 cases have been reported in the Cobb school district, and for 10 days the entire 5th grade at East Side Elementary School in East Cobb went to remote learning due to an outbreak.
But Memark—who posted several slides with high transmission and pediatric hospitalization data—said it was important to “use as many of the tools as possible” to curtail the spread of the virus.
She said that since August, roughly 25 percent of all COVID-19 cases in Cobb have been between the ages of 5-17, as well as 136 outbreaks and four pediatric deaths.
“There is a lot of significant transmission happening in those groups,” she said.
The health board’s statement in part addressed that as follows:
“Hospitalizations in school-aged children are also the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. The fact that many of these children are not eligible to be vaccinated and have been shown to spread the virus to others has been concerning since the beginning of this school year.”
The statement—which you can read in full here—concludes:
“Each school system has their own unique challenges to meet the needs of students and faculty and we respect their authority to make the final decisions. All questions regarding school protocols should be directed to the relevant school district.”
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Cobb Collaborative and the SAM Foundation will present Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), a two-day interactive workshop in suicide first aid, at East Cobb United Methodist Church next week.
