FREDERICKTOWN — The risk of a substitute teacher shortage led to Fredericktown Local Schools implementing a mask mandate for its staff, which took effect this week.

“The trending data of our staff absences would have led to a potential sub shortage,” superintendent Susan Hayward wrote in an email to Knox Pages Tuesday.

“Many staff were already voluntarily wearing masks so they wouldn’t be quarantined and away from supporting the education of our students. We continue to look at daily attendance percentages, classrooms, grade bands, ES, MS, HS buildings, and the district as a whole.”

The mandate applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated staff members, Hayward wrote. Masks remain optional for students. 

Based on the district’s dashboard, the majority of cases are among students. The majority of people quarantined in the district are also students, Hayward wrote.

More than 100 people were quarantined district-wide last week, which was the most out of Knox County’s six districts. Mount Vernon City Schools’s quarantine numbers were not far behind Friday, with 97 students in quarantine.

Fredericktown has the same number of active COVID-19 cases — 16 — as it did Friday, according to its dashboard. The number of people in quarantine in the district decreased from 111 Friday to 84 Tuesday.

A mask mandate for students and/or a switch to remote learning will be considered if case and quarantine numbers rise.

“If our numbers continue to increase we will look at face masks for all students and remote learning (for classrooms, grade band, buildings, and the district as a whole),” Hayward wrote. “For example, we may have one elementary classroom go to remote learning if several are quarantined.” 

Hayward announced the policy change Friday in a post on the district website, in which she wrote the goal of the district was to keep students and staff in school, in-person, five days a week. Mask-wearing allowed the district to achieve the goal of continuous in-person learning last year, Hayward wrote.

Unmasked, unvaccinated students who are identified as close contacts to someone who tests positive for the COVID-19 virus are required to quarantine. However, if a student who consistently wears a mask or a vaccinated student is exposed to someone who tests positive for the COVID-19 virus, they are not required to be quarantined. 

Students under 12 years of age are ineligible for COVID-19 vaccination at this time. A close contact is someone who has been within 6 feet of a person with a confirmed case of COVID-19 for more than 15 minutes without a double barrier (both students wearing masks properly). 

Knox Public Health has strongly urged Knox County schools to adopt universal masking, which is in line with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Ohio Department of Health.

Knox County deputy health commissioner Zach Green said Friday every school district in the county has recorded positive COVID-19 cases among students and staff, and has had to quarantine people as a result. 

“If your son or daughter is not going to wear a facial covering in school as an option, the possibility of them being placed in quarantine and being removed from the classroom setting is unfortunately highly likely at this point,” Green said.