‘Russian roulette with our children.’ NC county leader scolds Union school board

Fallout continued this week from the Union County school board’s decision to stop — and then reinstate a week later — proactive quarantining of students who may not be sick but were potentially exposed to COVID-19 at school.

As the Observer has previously reported, North Carolina’s top health official threatened the school board with legal action if they did not rescind the decision, which initially led to thousands of students returning to classrooms during a time they were supposed to be isolated due to COVID-19 exposure. Behind the scenes and in some public exchanges, officials from the school board, at the county level and in state government have tangled over who has authority to make students and staff quarantine and have argued over whether more COVID-19 safety rules are needed.

On Monday, for the first time publicly, school board Chairperson Melissa Merrell detailed what she says state Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mandy Cohen had planned to do if certain pandemic protocols weren’t re-established in Union County Public Schools.

“They had a letter of abatement … they would come in and take over our Union County Public School properties,” Merrell said Monday during a board of county commissioners meeting.

At the county and state level in North Carolina, health directors have broad authority to declare private or public spaces as hazardous to public health.

An abatement order — similar to one issued last year against a racetrack that had crowds in excess of state COVID-19 capacity limits, and another levied against a Charlotte church — aims to stop activity that is likely to spread a communicable disease, like the coronavirus. In the past, public health authorities have shut down or required a temporary closure when an “imminent hazard” is declared. In other cases, authorities attempt to put in more effective controls, like mask requirements or social distancing requirements.

In the case of schools, it’s not clear what an abatement order from Cohen would have mandated. Previously, questions about the state’s authority from the Observer to DHHS were unanswered.

In Union County, the school board’s 8-1 vote Monday to revise its earlier decision appears to have staved off an abatement order from state officials. The district will re-establish but reduce quarantine times for students who haven’t tested positive and in some cases, those students will need to wear a mask for a short period of time.

The board’s policy now is more in line with North Carolina and federal guidelines for reopening schools during the pandemic.

The change did not, however, ease the minds of the majority of county commissioners — three of five refused to give the school board a vote of confidence Monday.

Some commissioners scolded Merrell and the UCPS board for allowing thousands of students in quarantine back into the classrooms last week. Merrell argued some 3,000 of the 7,000 students who broke quarantine last week had already been home for the full 14 days, which at the time was the district’s quarantine period.

The school board also refused to continue having school nurses and staff conduct contact tracing, saying the duty is legally that of the county’s public health director and his staff.

Those decisions violated public health law in North Carolina and put the community at risk, Cohen told the board in a letter.

Against advice of health experts, there’s no requirement for using a mask indoors in UCPS.

Chairman Richard Helms, of the Union County Board of County Commissioners, said Monday he supports leaving masks optional in schools.

“But what I was not in favor of was throwing caution to the wind and doing no contact tracing, no quarantine, no nothing.

“It’s kind of like playing Russian roulette with our children. And that I’m totally against.”

Merrell and two members of the county commissioners, though, suggested this week that Union County Public Health officials did not communicate quickly or clearly what obligations the school board had under state public health law. Others on the county board, though, disputed those claims, saying the local health director has been in near-daily contact with district officials and the school board — like others statewide — has been given detailed recommendations from health officials on how to conduct reopening, which includes legal responsibilities.

“Y’all voted to do nothing,” Commissioner Vice Chairman Dennis Rape told Merrell during the meeting. “When I taught for 16 years, they always told me you err on the side of safety for these children, and now I’m starting to believe the children are the carriers to the seniors. I’ve lost two friends in the past week.”

On Tuesday, Union County Public Health Director Dennis Joyner told the Observer: “The contact tracing process within Union County public schools is being further refined.”

After threat from NC officials, here’s what will change in Union County schools

‘No confidence’ vote in Union County

The Union County commissioners added Merrell to their agenda during Monday’s meeting. After she spoke and answered questions, Commissioner David Williams made a rare motion: he asked his fellow commissioners to give the school board their vote of confidence.

“They’ve done an admirable job in a tough circumstance,” Williams said. “They’ve made some tough calls in the last year, which in hindsight were pretty darn smart.”

The motion failed 3-2, with Williams and Commissioner Stony Rushing on the losing end.

The impact of such a motion — an unusual move in intergovernmental politics — often lands with a thud, according to a panel of North Carolina political science experts the Observer reached out to this week.

“It is essentially a public declaration of dissatisfaction and ...lack of confidence in the body,” said Chris Cooper, the director of the Western Carolina University Public Policy Institute. “No confidence votes do come up from time to time in local government, but they are most common in North Carolina in university governance — like when a Faculty Senate expresses lack of confidence in a university administrator. In both cases, they draw press coverage and public attention, but the power of attention is as far as the power goes.”

While largely symbolic, Jason Husser, the director of the Elon University Poll and an associate professor of political science and policy studies, said the county commissioners’ vote is meaningful since they have revenue power that intersects with the school board.

“An agitated group of county commissioners can, theoretically, be a real problem for a school board’s goals by pulling the purse strings until they are heard,” Husser said.

J. Michael Bitzer, the T.P. and J.C. Leonard Chair of Political Science at Catawba College added: “I guess when the budget negotiations happen, you may see some blow-back at that point in terms of funding and requests.”

Still, for three of the five Union County commissioners, not giving the school board a vote of confidence sent the immediate message: The weren’t happy school leaders voted to halt COVID-19 contact tracing in schools and most quarantine procedures.

“It took us three days to repair the damage that was done,” said Rape of the school board’s vote Sept. 13. “Let’s work through this before we start patting them on the back.”

Masks and schools

Since the beginning of the school year last month, Union County’s school board has held strong against a mask mandate. Merrell said State Health Director Elizabeth Cuervo Tilson wanted the district to implement a mask mandate, but Merrell told her: “We are mask optional.”

Besides masks, Union County school board members have pushed back against other COVID-19 protocols, namely contact tracing and quarantines — major protective measures for school children. The school board believes contact tracing is not legal for the district to conduct, but a job for the county health department.

Meanwhile in nearly every other public school system in North Carolina, classrooms have largely avoided the level of disruptions from quarantines that plagued Union County schools over the past month. The main reason for that: In schools where students and teachers are required to wear a mask, quarantine is usually not mandatory.

For weeks, Merrell and other board members have also maintained that they wanted a shorter quarantine period than 14 days. Merrell told commissioners 14 days was too long, and that she saw pictures on Instagram of students on 14-day quarantines out in the public, at the mall and other places possibly spreading COVID-19 into the community.

How does your county’s COVID-19 vaccination rate stack up to others in NC?

Comparing the number of cases and impact of quarantining across school districts is difficult, as the public health risk inside schools is impacted not just by whether precautions like masks are in place but also by the status of the surrounding community’s health.

For example, in the two public school districts closest to Charlotte that aren’t requiring masks, the local vaccination rate significantly lags the statewide average. In those counties, Lincoln and Union, the most-recent positivity rate for COVID-19 is higher than North Carolina’s statewide percent of positive tests. That data reflects only active infections from test results from the last two weeks.

Outbreaks in schools and among athletic teams can occur and are currently reported even in districts where masks are used and a high percentage of the population is vaccinated. But the use of masks is a critical factor in how quarantine requirements will impact a school — meaning that when a mask is used, the subsequent number of people who may be required to quarantine generally is much lower.

For example, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has more than three times as many students as Union County Public Schools. Recently, the number of confirmed and active COVID-19 cases in Union County schools was nearly the same as in the larger CMS system — yet a much lower percentage of CMS students and staff were in proactive quarantine. Due to its masking requirement, CMS isn’t required to quarantine as many students. And CMS schools have largely avoided outbreaks in schools since classrooms reopened late last month.

A look at the severity of clusters and infections by school in each county also show significant differences.

Of the nearly 50 schools listed on Union County’s COVID-19 case reporting dashboard, nearly 1 of every 4 schools has 10 or more cases reported among students in the last week. In Charlotte schools, just five schools of more than 100 locations reporting at least one case last week had a concentration of 10 or more COVID-19 cases among students.

Leader in academics

Merrell contends that the board’s recent opposition to quarantines for students stems from the desire to have in-person learning available.

Union County school leaders, like all districts in the state, have had to make tough decisions in navigating through the pandemic. Last year, UCPS was one of the few districts in the area to open the school year with some form of in-person learning — as much as the state would allow — and it shows in academic performance measures.

The district performed best in the state last year, with 63% of students scoring a 3 or higher on North Carolina end-of-year assessments. EdNC, an independent source of data and analysis, reports the 63% is down from 73.6% in 2018-19, when UCPS was the third-highest scorer in the state that year. But Union County students did far better than other districts in the region throughout 2020.

“We were the No. 1-ranked school district for the first time (that) I can remember,” Merrell said. “Instead of looking at the doom and gloom, I want to encourage Union County citizens to look at the achievements.”

Merrell told EdNC this month the emphasis on in-person learning and test preparation were prime contributors to the district’s performance.

Merrell said when school started back after spring break in 2020, the school board voted to go five days a week to help prepare for end-of-grade and end-of-course tests. Schools also provided tutoring and remediation for students who had fallen behind.