Masks will be mandatory for Kalispell Public Schools students this year following recommendations from local pediatricians.

The decision was unanimous at a lengthy school board meeting Tuesday. Public comment was overwhelmingly supportive of the revision to the district’s initial policy that stated staff would be required to wear masks, but students would be “strongly encouraged, or may be required” to do so. About 100 people followed to the meeting remotely.

The revised policy now requires all students, staff and visitors to wear masks in buildings, buses and when six feet of physical distancing cannot be maintained.

Accommodations will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Whitefish and Columbia Falls school districts will also require everyone to wear masks.

“I think if our goal is to return to in-person instruction and to keep in-person instruction in place we need to do the things we can to help mitigate that [virus spread],” Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Micah Hill said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the virus that causes COVID-19 is primarily thought to spread through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. Masks, combined with good hand hygiene and physical distancing, are done to reduce transmission.

“These are all bits of the puzzle,” Kalispell pediatrician James Peter Heyboer said. “Everything we do reduces transmission by some percentage point and the more interventions we take has a cumulative effect on the whole of reducing the chance of transmission to the greatest extent possible.

“The reality of the situation is that it’s not going to be zero,” he said about cases occurring. “It’s not, but that’s not a reason to obviously do everything we can to reduce it.”

Hill said the school district policy change is a result of new and emerging information from the medical community and local doctors such as Heyboer and fellow pediatricians Lynn Dykstra and John Cole and infectious disease specialist Jeff Tjaden.

“I think we’re starting to get new information all the time about this virus. It’s ever-evolving, but there are at least new studies kind of showing that persons from the age of 10-19 transmit the virus just as well as adults do, and so I would want my son, who attends Flathead, to take every precaution that I do when I care for patients as well,” Tjaden said. “So I think protecting all our family members, staff and students is the right thing.”

Dykstra pointed to the new data coming out in rising numbers of cases of COVID-19 in children.

“I just want to point out to the general public a report was released yesterday indicated that there were 97,000 new pediatric cases of COVID in the last two weeks [of July] and that is a significant increase not just from testing, but from overall cases, and they are showing up in the states that have the highest increases,” Dykstra said.

That number comes from a recent American Academy of Pediatrics data report.

What kind of mask should students and staff wear?

Cole recommended a cloth mask with at least two layers to better capture respiratory droplets, as opposed to a single layer mask such as a neck gaiter, for example.

“By no means do kids need to be wearing surgical masks or N95 [masks], I think that’s way overkill, but you want to provide the best possible protection,” he said.

Dykstra also pointed out that masks with exhalation vents are not helpful to people around the wearer.

“It’s important to point out masks out there that do have vents for expiring CO2 (carbon dioxide) are not beneficial to people around you,” she said.

Schools will also put other protective measures in place, such as hand sanitizing stations and desk shields for teachers, to name a couple of examples. The district is also in the midst of purchasing other equipment, materials and technology with about $1.2 million in federal and $2.5 million in state funding as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In addition to the staples of hand sanitizer, masks, thermometers, air filter replacements and electrostatic sprayers — the list includes additional library books, science lab goggles, Chromebooks and iPads to reduce sharing.

For more information visit www.sd5.k12.mt.us

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.