Danvers Schools Not Close To Lifting Indoor Mask Order

DANVERS, MA — While state data suggests that Danvers Public Schools students and teachers are below the coronavirus vaccination threshold required to consider lifting the indoor mask order, a major obstacle in any hopes of reaching that threshold anytime soon is an unwillingness among staff and families to share vaccination information with the district.

Danvers Assistant Superintendent of Schools Keith Taverna told the school committee Monday night that state data shows 66 percent of Danvers residents ages 16 to 22, and 56 percent of residents ages 12 to 15, are at least partially vaccinated.

However, under the district's voluntary vaccination disclosure policy, only 15 percent of high school students and 6.75 percent of eligible middle school students have confirmed their vaccination status. Sixty-seven percent of high school staff have documented their vaccination staff, along with 65.8 percent of middle school staff.

Under the most recent Department of Elementary and Secondary Education guidance, districts can lift the mandatory indoor mask mandate among vaccinated students and staff as long as both groups have a confirmed 80 percent vaccination rate at a specific school.

"We encourage the community to please share their vaccination records to help us with contact tracing as well as making informed decisions around masks as we continue to move forward," Taverna said.

The current DESE guidance is set to go through at least Nov. 1. Under the current guidance, all unvaccinated students and staff must continue to wear masks indoors even if the school reaches the 80 percent threshold and the district chooses to lift the universal mandate.

School Committee Chair Eric Crane said a survey designed to poll the school community on whether to keep the mask order after if it is no longer a state requirement was delayed until Danvers came closer to qualifying for that decision to be made at the district level.

"The right time, it seems to me, to do the parent survey is when we know that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is going to turn the control over to us," he said. "Because that's the time when we know what our options are going to be. That's the time to get the parent input.

"Right now we don't have any options."

Taverna told the committee that recent cases within schools have been coming down after reaching a peak two weeks ago when there were 77 new cases in the town and 15 among students. That number declined to 52 townwide the week ending Oct. 8 and 58 the week-ending Oct. 15. Last week, Taverna said there were eight new cases in the schools.

He said there have been 200 students participating in the test-to-stay daily testing so far this year and there were believed to be two cases of in-school spread.

The overall townwide vaccination rate is 74 percent.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)