ELY – Ely school board members approved a safe learning plan this week that establishes benchmarks or metrics in which the protective face mask requirements for school buildings could be dialed back when COVID-19 finally abates.
At their final meeting of the year Monday, board members also rebuffed an attempt by one of its own to “sunset” the Ely Safe Learning Plan Advisory Council (ESLPAC) that has been responsible for working with school administrators and the local medical professionals to establish and maintain health protocols as the coronavirus continues to rage through the school and Ely community.
The ESLPAC has worked for months to develop a roll-back plan for the protective face mask requirement that was put in place at the beginning of the school year because of increasing cases of COVID-19.
The protective face mask requirement will be maintained for quite some time as reported active COVID-19 cases in the school continue to rise. A substantial and sustained trend downward of coronavirus cases is now required for administrators to consider implementing a “face masks recommended” protocol.
Slight modifications to the plan were again made last week following the latest ESLPAC meeting, but Erie and the school principals were satisfied to present the plan for board consideration Monday night.
The conditions that would initiate a face mask recommendation, rather than a requirement, include:
Local ZIP Code case report below the “high transmission” range for three consecutive weeks.
Opportunity for all students in the Washington Elementary building (ages 5 to 11) to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 30, 2022.
Local COVID-19 outbreaks and conditions in the school and Ely community to be considered prior to face mask protocol changes.
There are some exceptions to the metrics, including an increase in positive cases in a classroom or among activity participants, if the local hospital is required to divert patients to another facility due to an increase in local COVID cases, and if the local transmission rate moves to a “high” level for three consecutive weeks.
Superintendent Erik Erie noted that three consecutive weeks of between three and six positive COVID cases would be required to consider a “face mask recommendation” protocol. As of Monday, the current COVID-19 active positive test count at the school stood at 17. Two new cases were reported since last Friday, Dec. 10. The cumulative positive test count is 79 for the current school year. A total of 48 positive cases were recorded during last school year.
“We tried to stay with something simple and easy to track,” Erie said. “It will still be far from where we are right now to get below the metric (to change protocols).”
Board chair Ray Marsnik was the only “no” vote to adopt the ELSPAC Safe Learning Plan. “To be honest with you, we are spending way too much time on this,” he said. “It seems like every meeting and study session we have we spend a good portion of time discussing this. I strongly believe that we should stick with the mask (required) mandate, and we lift it only when our medical professionals say it is safe to do so. That’s my feeling.”
Tom Omerza, the school board’s ESLPAC member, pushed the board to make a decision on adopting the Safe Learning Plan.
“We can’t just have fuzziness going into the future. We have to know what direction we are taking on the school campus,” he said. “When you look at what the administration has been doing trying to protect the campus and the community, they have done a great job, especially when you correlate it to what the (Ely) community is doing.”
He continued, “Outside of the hospital, clinic and dental office, where everybody goes there is no community effort or very little community effort to try to control this coronavirus. It seems like we are fighting this battle without a lot of help from the local community. We need to provide some direction to move past where we are at. Let’s provide an opportunity to get the community, when things are under control, to get to the mask recommended (protocol). The metric we want to use is the one that we can hopefully control the most. We are trying to provide a light at the end of the tunnel.”
Erie added that the Safe Learning Plan could be considered as a “living document” with metric changes continuing.
“One of the things that was brought up at our study session was about vaccination status,” he said. “If we reached a certain threshold, like 75 percent or something, maybe we don’t have to even look at (positive case) metrics. That is one of the things that the health care community has said, too.”
In the Ely school district, according to information provided by 6-12 principal Megan Anderson, as of Dec. 9, more than 63 percent of Memorial students are fully vaccinated for COVID-19. In the Washington building, more than 26 percent of students are fully vaccinated.

COVID advisory council remains
School board member Tony Colarich’s suggestion to reduce the size and scope of the district’s safe learning advisory council failed convincingly when his was the only “yes” vote on the agenda item.
The motion, “to reconfigure the Ely Safe Learning Plan Advisory Council (ESLPAC) to reduce the membership to consist of the superintendent, principals and a school board member,” was in jeopardy of dying on the vine when no board member would support Colarich. Marsnik stepped down from his position as board chair to support the motion for discussion.
The advisory council members, as many as 18, consisting of teachers, staff, employee union representatives, students, parents, local medical professionals, and public health representatives, collaborate and discuss health protocols and safety measures as they relate to the school community. They have been working with the Ely school administration as they develop campus health rules and learning recommendations. Since the beginning of the school year, the group has met in-person and virtually on Thursday afternoons. At one point last fall, the school board called for more members to serve on the council to provide more diverse representation.
“The purpose of this is not to limit or eliminate public opinion,” Colarich said. “The open forum is still available through emails. It makes it difficult, when there is a large committee with diverse opinions, to come up with a consensus. I feel that the committee is polarized and divided, and it needs to be streamlined and functional to make decisions.”
School board member Rochelle Sjoberg said she felt the purpose for the group was to allow for a way to bring parents and the community together.
“It clearly shows the transparency through their discussion. I don’t think anybody should have an expectation that this group is 100 percent having the same thoughts. The differences of input that everybody puts into it has made it what it is. I don’t want to see us dissolve this group with such a pertinent topic right now,” she said.
School board member Darren Visser agreed. “You are not going to get everybody to agree,” he said. “It is bringing a bunch of different people from different areas together to have a conversation. This is face-to-face conversation. It is not through email. You have the medical community. You have parents. You have school administration. This is a diverse group getting together, and you don’t see that in our society much anymore.”
Omerza added, “If you don’t have a diverse group representing what we are trying to do here on campus, which is education and safety, then you don’t know it all. We can’t function off of ignorance.”
Erie said the school administration team endorsed keeping the ESLPAC in its current configuration.
Marsnik, Omerza, Sjoberg, and Visser were joined by board member Holly Coombe in voting to reject the motion 5-1, with Colarich voting in the affirmative.