Miamisburg mandates masks for students, staff starting Monday

“As a district we have been closely watching our COVID-19 positive cases and quarantines, and making building changes as needed,” Blessing said. “Unfortunately, due to high numbers of quarantines, the district has reached a point where we can no longer just strongly request staff, students, and visitors wear a face mask.”

Staff and student safety is the most important factor to consider when making this decision, she said.

“As we continue to monitor district data related to COVID-19 cases and quarantines, we are seeing the impact that it is having on our district,” Blessing said. “The district has encouraged personal choice in wearing a face mask as long as we could, but now there is no doubt we must act if we want to keep students and staff in a face-to-face learning environment this year.”

Miamisburg School District has approximately 5,135 students. Of that, more than 300 students were in quarantine last week, she said.

“Because our goal has always been to keep students in school, we believe that requiring masks will reduce quarantines and enable more students to stay in school,” Blessing said.

If the number of students and/or staff in quarantine or isolation continue to increase, the district will return to virtual learning, she said.

“Students need to be at school, and we want to do all that we can to ensure that they remain in school for the 2021-22 school year,” Blessing said.

Since an August surge of COVID cases and quarantines disrupted the back-to-school process, many schools have recently changed their policies, adopting mask mandates, and in some cases, have closed for multiple days or a week in an attempt to stem the tide of COVID spread.

As of Monday, Troy will be the only one of the area’s 12 largest school districts with no mask mandate. Northmont and Springboro have partial mask mandates (grades PK-6), and the other nine will require masks for everyone (Dayton, Centerville, Kettering, Beavercreek, Huber Heights, Miamisburg, Lebanon, Fairborn and Xenia).

The note to parents was tweeted on the school district’s Twitter account, leading Jeffrey Skudlarek, of Miamisburg, to say he was glad to see the switch in district policy.

“Just asking for people to mask in school wasn’t doing enough to prevent rising cases and quarantines across the district,” Skudlarek tweeted. “I’m grateful for this policy!”

Staff Writer Jeremy Kelley contributed to this report.