Pennsylvania Health Secretary berated Bucks County officials for advice on reopening schools, urging them to revise plan

Pennsylvania’s Acting Health Secretary berated Bucks County over its guidelines to reopen schools on Monday, calling the guidelines “alarming” and saying they could decrease the county’s ability to respond to coronavirus outbreaks and to derail the goal of resuming school education for students.

Early Tuesday, the county revised its guidelines for schools. His new statement insisted that much of the county’s previous guidelines were “in tune” with the CDC, but that the revision “will serve to strengthen that bond.”

Still, the back and forth highlights what appears to be one of the Philadelphia area’s most intense debates about how to safely reopen schools after a year of disrupted learning. And it came less than a week after the county had already revised its Aug. 15 recommendations to call for school masking amid public complaints about its initial guidelines that schools could make masks optional.

With county districts on the cusp of a new school year, a list of Bucks school boards are meeting this week to review revised masking policies. Public servants prepare to face a divided public; parents opposed to the masking have expressed outrage, while others say schools are not planning to do enough to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Like the entire region, Bucks County has high transmission of COVID-19, with an increasing number of cases and a 6% test positivity rate on Friday, according to the CDC.

In a letter sent to county commissioners on Monday, Pennsylvania Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said aspects of the county’s guidelines “ignore evidence-based public health practices,” are not supported by a scientific understanding of the virus and are inconsistent with recommendations for schools from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state.

The intervention came as Pennsylvania largely left reopening decisions to individual districts, urging them to follow CDC guidelines but refusing to impose a statewide school mask mandate.

This paved the way for a patchwork of rules that can differ from city to city and left school boards, rather than scientists or government officials, to make health decisions that have caused a division. bitter community. In the handful of counties with health services responsible for preventing disease, they are responsible for providing guidance to schools.

The debate at Bucks has been particularly controversial – in part because county health director David Damsker has recommended less stringent COVID-19 prevention measures for schools than federal and state officials, advocating this summer that schools treat the virus as they would a typical seasonal flu.

His approach, some aspects of which Beam said were not based on scientific evidence or best practice and differed from neighboring counties, made him a lightning rod – relying on those who wanted schools to reopen quickly and the critics of those who say his philosophy is too lax to be sure.

In a July email to a Bucks County daycare administrator that was circulated widely online and sparked an uproar among some parents, Damsker suggested that an “easy way” to deal with the obligation to notify the county of the cases “is not to have your parents report COVID-19 to you.”

READ MORE: From COVID-19 data to in-person school, Bucks County Health Department is following its own path

Pennsylvania has only told districts and counties to follow federal recommendations for reopening schools this fall – refusing to impose warrants or give direction to local leaders beyond demanding compliance with CDC guidelines and the case report requirement.

Beam’s letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Inquirer, marked an unusual intervention.

“Without… clear messages – or worse, with the inconsistent and alarming messages included in the BCHD guidance document – I fear that our principals are not equipped with the tools to keep our children safe in school. “Beam wrote in the letter to the Commissioners.

Damsker did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a county spokesperson shared the new guidelines with The Inquirer in response to questions about Beam’s letter.

The updated guidelines say anyone with symptoms of coronavirus should be referred for testing, and anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 should self-isolate from school for 10 days. It also indicates that the school and the county should contact Trace, which Bucks had previously said it had no plans to do.

Overall, this represents a clear reversal from the county’s earlier directive that students who tested positive for COVID could return to school after being fever-free for 24 hours or if they haven’t developed a disease. symptoms within three days.

Beam called the policy “completely inconsistent” with federal and state recommendations and said there was “no definitive evidence” for it “published in the scientific record.” She said the county guidelines of Aug. 15 would “allow infectious people to be in schools,” putting all children under the age of 12 and anyone else who is unvaccinated at risk of infection and death.

The Bucks County Department of Health “wants our schools to be safe, healthy, open and able to provide quality in-person education,” officials wrote in the new guidelines.

READ MORE: Despite CDC guidelines, some schools in the Philly area are not planning to require masks – for now

READ MORE: School mask requirements come under fire as parents step up pressure on districts