Some schools reported increases in Covid-19 cases in April. Not everyone is worried about it – vtdigger.org

About four months ago, Vermont schools reopened after a break to find themselves swamped with Covid-19.

As students returned after winter break in early January, Vermont schools struggled to hold classes amid a surge in cases. Faced with staffing shortages and students out sick, many closed their buildings just days after reopening. 

“Things are terrible,” Emily Hecker, a spokesperson for the Winooski School District, said at the time.

Fast-forward to last week. Students returned from spring break amid another rise in Covid-19 cases. School mask mandates are a thing of the past. And, after state officials ended Covid-19 testing programs in schools, many students are not getting tested for the virus, administrators say.

Attitudes around the virus in schools appear to have undergone a dramatic change in the past three months. In interviews or in messages, administrators around the state described school communities that were no longer preoccupied with Covid-19 — in some cases, despite rising case counts and fears that the virus is spreading undetected. 

“Honestly, on a daily basis right now, I’m not hearing a lot of talk about Covid,” said Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified School District. “It seems like it’s just being treated like the flu, or any other nasty cold virus that we have going around.”

“It’s kind of business as usual in our district right now,” she added. 

According to state data, Covid-19 cases in Vermont children ticked up slightly in April. But some believe that cases reported by schools and the state represent only a fraction of the real number.  

State officials stopped collecting Covid-19 case data in schools in January. And in early April, the state Agency of Education halted organized Covid-19 testing programs in Vermont schools, shifting the responsibility for reporting the results of at-home Covid-19 tests to parents. 

By all accounts, the virus in Vermont is not nearly as severe as it was in January, when the state reported thousands of cases a day, shattering records.

Many more children have also been vaccinated over the course of this school year. Those ages 5 to 11 became eligible for initial doses of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine last November, and those ages 12 to 15 have been eligible for booster doses since January. 

Recent data released by the Vermont Agency of Education showed that, as of March 22, 64% of public school students ages 5 and up have received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, although local figures vary widely. 

Administrators in some school districts and supervisory unions said that they are seeing few Covid cases in their schools, and some have stopped tallying cases or informing parents about every new positive test. 

“We are not formally tracking,” David Baker, the superintendent of Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union, said in an email. “Our numbers are good.”

But some districts and supervisory unions have reported Covid-19 bumps.

Last week, the Harwood Unified Union School District reported 117 Covid cases in schools for the month of April, more than twice March’s figure and the highest monthly count since January. 

In the Mount Mansfield Unified Union School District, administrators recorded 72 cases in the first two weeks of April, nearly twice the 38 reported in the last two weeks of March. Last week, the first week after students returned from spring break, the district reported another 25 cases in schools.

Both Harwood Union and Mount Mansfield are among the most highly vaccinated districts in the state, according to the data from late March. At least 80% of eligible students in both districts have gotten two shots. 

In the Franklin Northeast Supervisory Union, administrators reported a roughly four-fold increase in Covid-19 cases across nine schools, a career center, and the supervisory union’s central office ahead of spring break. 

Lynn Cota, the superintendent of Franklin Northeast, said that the district is contending with both an increase in Covid cases and a separate flu-like condition.

“We have just returned from April vacation, so I don’t really have a sense of where we are right now,” Cota said in a text message.

But, she noted, “My perception is that people are transitioning to a place where they understand that there are many exposures in the community and that it is something we’ll need to learn to live with in the coming years.”

In some districts and supervisory unions, administrators said that families and staff have lost interest in testing, even though schools are well-stocked with rapid tests and give them out for free.

“We suspect there are a lot of people not even reporting anything,” said John Castle, the superintendent of North Country Supervisory Union. “Because they’re either not testing or, even if they are testing, they’re doing take-home tests, and may be choosing not to report depending on how symptomatic they are.”

Anne Sosin, a public health researcher and policy fellow at Dartmouth College, cast doubt on state and school data.

“I think we have very high transmission in the state, but we’re only seeing a fraction of the cases,” Sosin said, noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday identified seven Vermont counties as having high Covid-19 transmission. 

But messaging from state and federal authorities — including changing CDC guidance and state officials urging schools to drop mask mandates — are effectively telling people to relax, Sosin said.

“I’d really like to see very transparent communication about the level of transmission in communities,” she said. “Some would shift their choices right now if they knew how high transmission was and what getting infected might mean.”

Sosin later said via email that she has “heard more accounts of higher risk individuals being infected during the last month than I have at any point of the pandemic.” 

Nevertheless, many school administrators described school environments in which staff and families were much more relaxed.

Becca McCray, the president of the Vermont State School Nurses Association, said that Covid transmission in schools was simply mirroring that in the rest of the state.

“As cases go up in the community, yes, Covid cases will go up in the schools,” McCray said. “But it’s at a very micro level that that’s happening.”

In the Burlington School District, where McCray works, many are no longer anxious about the virus, she said. 

“Coming back from April break, the focus isn’t on Covid,” she said. “It’s on, ‘Oh my gosh, there are only six weeks of school left.’”

Adam Rosenberg, the superintendent of Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union, said in an interview that his schools were “definitely” seeing an uptick in Covid cases last week. But that increase has caused little anxiety for many families, he said. 

“There’s definitely some pandemic fatigue setting in,” he said. “I don’t hear a lot from families the way I used to.”

In Winooski, where conditions were “terrible” in early January, the atmosphere is beginning to feel like “a post-pandemic time,” said Hecker, the district spokesperson.

“People are able to socialize again, people are able to travel again, we’re allowed to have volunteers in the building again,” she said. “I think that’s probably giving people a sense of normal life resuming.”