School resumes today after the Labor Day holiday, with Pennsylvania’s statewide mask mandate in place, and while all of Indiana County’s school districts say they will enforce it, not everyone is happy about it.
Groups of students and parents have planned protests at some schools within the commonwealth today, including at Derry Area and Latrobe. River Valley superintendent Philip Martell posted a letter Friday regarding the district’s mask policy and said that a “protest safety zone” will be available at the two campuses, and that he has asked state police, Blairsville Borough and Saltsburg Borough police to be present.
Martell reported yesterday that two students at Saltsburg Elementary School have tested positive for covid-19 and that contact tracing has been conducted. Both of those students were in school last Friday.
Indiana Area superintendent Michael Vuckovich says a second student at the Senior High has tested positive, bringing the district’s total cases to seven – two at the Senior High, four at the Junior High/Eisenhower Elementary, and one at Ben Franklin Elementary. Vuckovich writes that currently there are 60-to-65 students in quarantine.
Indiana Area has posted a face-covering exemption form it is asking parents to have filled out by a medical professional if they wish to opt out of masking.
Several districts, including Marion Center and Homer-Center, says students who refuse to wear a mask will be sent to a designated area and their parents called to take them home. Homer-Center superintendent Curtis Whitesel says that in those cases, it will be considered an illegal absence, and he asks parents to not let it come to that.
