HODGDON, Maine — School board members of SAD 70 voted Monday, Aug. 9, to make masks optional for the upcoming school year, but school superintendent Stephen Fitzpatrick said that could be subject to change if cases continue to rise in Aroostook County.
Hodgdon Middle/High School and Mill Pond School join most other Aroostook schools in making masks optional for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year. The move came on the same night that two other Aroostook County school districts — Southern Aroostook and Frenchville — voted to require all students and staff to wear masks this fall.
The board also voted for the optional use of pool testing, a process of testing students in small groups to catch positive COVID-19 cases before they spread among others.
But Fitzpatrick noted that mask policy could change as the school year began, noting the increase in cases over the past month, as the delta variant of COVID-19 spreads its way across the country and vaccination rates are not high enough to contain the spread. He cited an Aug. 5 meeting held between superintendents and Dr. Nirav Shah of the Maine CDC, where they discussed mask policy as well as the benefits of in-person learning for children.
“All of these plans are subject to change, and in actuality I would claim that I expect them to change,” Fitzpatrick said. “At this point in time, promoting vaccinations can help schools safely return to in-person learning.”
Several parents raised objections to the school’s pool testing for students, citing privacy concerns. School board member Clarissa Porter noted that in a survey among parents, only 22 percent supported the idea of pool testing.
Sarah Baillargeon, the school nurse for SAD 70, was present at the meeting to address parent’s concerns and answer questions from parents.
“The really important piece here is that we want people to stay in school,” Baillargeon said. “So the time [the school] had to completely close [its] building, every time it was because we had so many staff quarantined that they couldn’t open. If they were pool testing, they wouldn’t have had to quarantine.”
Board member Mark Ganzel also voiced his support for pool testing, sharing how his daughter, a medical student in Boston, eventually came to embrace the method at her school after initial skepticism.
“She’s actually more comfortable and feels safer going to college there, because she has seen so many times how rapidly they can catch someone before they reach a more aggressive level of contagiousness,” said Ganzel. “If you don’t do any testing, there’s a chance you’re going to have multiple infected people.”
