At a Lake Pend Oreille School District meeting Tuesday, Superintendent Tom Albertson recognized Tommy Lund, an LPOSD school bus driver who passed away after contracting COVID-19, and the transportation department as a whole.

“It has taken a toll on the department, and rightfully so,” Albertson said. “I can’t express the professionalism and hard work [they have exhibited].”

James Koehler, director of transportation for LPOSD, credited the transportation staff for their dedication.

“All the credit goes to my team,” Koehler said. “They are an amazing group of individuals.”

The board also unanimously passed a motion to update quarantine guidelines according to the most recent information provided by the CDC, which allows people who are not tested to end their quarantine after 10 days if they show no symptoms, and people who have been tested and received a negative result to end their quarantine after seven days if the test was at least 5 days after the close contact.

“Panhandle Health District still believes the gold standard is still 14 days,” Albertson said, “but they recognize the difficulty of that at times.”

In a COVID-19 update to the school board, Albertson said there were 16 active cases in the district as of Tuesday afternoon and 66 students and staff quarantining. Three were students from Clark Fork Junior/Senior High School, but those students never attended school after being infected over the Thanksgiving holiday.

At Sandpoint High School, three other students tested positive and were in close contact with individuals outside of school.

As numbers continue to rise, Albertson said, it is extremely important for people who show signs of the virus or who might have been exposed to stay home. If someone in a household is pending test results, he said, the other members of the household should quarantine until the results come back.

“We’ve run into this case where, ‘yeah, I came to school but my dad was waiting on a test,’ and the test was positive,” Albertson said. “If there was a positive, it’s more than likely there’s going to be other positives.”

If parents do find out that their child or someone in the family tested positive, it helps for them to let the school district know immediately.

“We get it from PHD, but it is quicker if we get it from the parents,” Albertson said.

Albertson said he also received word that all K-12 staff, including teachers, transportation, kitchen and other personnel, would be put in a category called 1B in line for COVID-19 vaccinations when they become available.

Those in the first category, 1A, are health care workers and residents in long-term care facilities, according to the Center for Disease Control. 1B includes essential workers such as teachers, law enforcement and emergency medical technicians.

Albertson said he was hopeful district employees might have access to the voluntary vaccination as early as January, but it was not yet certain if that would be the case.

The District is also partnering with Kaniksu Health Services to provide testing, Albertson said. To access COVID-19 testing, individuals need a referral from their primary care doctor. The partnership with Kaniksu Health, Albertson said, will allow people who don’t have primary care doctors to get a referral for testing.

One board member also brought up that the school district now has access to at-home testing. However, Albertson said these tests remained unrealistic for the majority of cases at the schools.

“it’s a home kit that you have to print the label and overnight deliver UPS,” he said. “We don’t really have the manpower in our nursing site to set up a testing site.”

Staff interested in the testing kits could be given access, he said, but it would not be realistic for district-wide testing.

“It sounds good, but it’s assuming you have a lot of staff,” Albertson said. “We would like to keep that to the professionals as much as we can.”

In an update from Hope Elementary, school principal Sherri Hatley said students in grades, four, five and six were still meeting their academic growth expectations. Younger students had a harder time, she said.

“Those are the kids that were hit the hardest [by changes due to the pandemic],” she said. “The weeds grew over their path a little bit more.”

Currently, the school is focusing most of its energy on math, reading and some science, she said. Children showed progress in their interim assessments, she said, and showed excitement to learn.

“Our children don’t dread taking them,” she said.

Hatley also gave an update on the 65 letters students sent to veterans for Veterans Day in September.

“[The veterans] tell me they were never recognized for their service, and they’re so honored and so proud that these kids are honoring them,” she said. “We’ve reached people differently that we’ve never reached before.”

During the public comment portion of the meeting, board clerk Kelly Fisher read letters from the public, as the meeting was limited to 10 people because of Idaho’s stage 2 limitations.

Several letters expressed frustrations over mask and quarantine requirements, while some made false claims about the efficacy of masks or claimed that the pandemic was part of a propaganda campaign.

One letter from a parent asked, “If a child tests positive within six feet of my child, why not give parents the choice [on whether to quarantine]?”

Geraldine Lewis, vice chair of the board, said in a statement later in the meeting that it was important to differentiate between quarantine and isolation.

“I know there’s some confusion about quarantining, based on one letter tonight I think some people don’t understand the difference,” she said. “On the CDC site, quarantine is keeping someone who might have been exposed to the virus away from others, for the protection of the others. Isolation is when you have been affected [by the virus] and you’re staying home.”

Another letter from two grandparents of LPOSD students praised the board for their efforts to keep children safe.

“In our opinion, you have needed to make some rules to maintain the safety,” they wrote. “Social distancing, sanitizing and face masks just make sense.”