Mountain Home Public Schools welcomes students back to the hallways of its six campuses Wednesday morning.
For the second consecutive year, Mountain Home opens its year while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Superintendent Dr. Jake Long says the district is excited to see the school year begin, pandemic or not.
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Mountain Home students will enter the school year being required to wear masks when indoors and under other specific circumstances. Dr. Long says the COVID-19 protocols will be more like the start of last year, rather than the end of the spring semester.
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Recommended and developed by the district’s Ready for Learning committee, the mask requirement is based on current data from the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement (ACHI) for COVID-19 infection rate. Click HERE to view the current map.
When ACHI data reflects the district is extreme or high spread, masks are required indoors for all students, staff and visitors when six feet of social distance cannot be maintained, regardless of vaccination status. This also includes all school-sponsored transportation. Extreme spread is defined as 100 or more cases in a 14-day period per 10,000 people. Severe is 50 to 99 per 10,000.
When the data for the school district changes, the mask policy will follow. If the infection rate drops to moderate, which is 30 to 49 infections for a 14-day period per 10,000 people, the mask requirements will change to recommendations only. When the district to 29 infections per 10,000, the masks are purely optional.
Dr. Long says the district is facing an even bigger challenge than faced at the opening of the 2020-21 year.
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Despite facing a surge in COVID-19, Dr. Long says the lessons learned by the district last year will improve the quality of learning for students in 2021-22.
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Dr. Long also asks district patrons and students to be patient with the normal aspects of the opening day of school, especially with most students of the district returning to in-person learning.
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The district encourages the public to monitor its website at www.mhbombers.com and its Facebook page at facebook.com/bombersmh.
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