Kent City Council members unanimously voted Wednesday to consider whether the city should implement a mask mandate during a Health and Safety Committee meeting on Sept. 1.
Ten days after adopting a masks-optional policy for the school year, Kent City Schools reversed course and decided to mandate universal masking for all students and staff members, regardless of vaccination status. In doing so, they were diverging from nearly every other school system in the county. What changed Superintendent George Joseph’s mind?
Out of Portage County’s 12 public school systems, only Kent City Schools and Bio-Med Science Academy will require students to wear masks. Those two districts flipped their original decisions after public outcry against masks-optional policies. The remaining school districts, including Aurora, said that until they are required to enforce a mask mandate, they will leave the masking decision up to parents.
If we have learned anything since March 2020, it is this: We need each other. The pandemic has revealed in large and small ways that our society and our very lives are an interdependent web tethered to one another.
As a parent of two young, unvaccinated children in Aurora's public schools, I strongly urge our superintendent and school board to rethink the decision to not mandate the use of masks among this group of unvaccinated children.
Responding to a "rapid rise" of confirmed Covid-19 cases, the Portage County health department and Kent city officials urged residents to resume precautions that had been largely abandoned after the winter wave and encouraged unvaccinated people to "please reconsider."
Money, lots of it, is headed to every city, village and township in Portage County, thanks to the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion economic Covid-19 stimulus package signed into law March 11.
Faced with the permanent closure of Kent's emergency room, City Manager Dave Ruller and Fire Chief John Tosko are lobbying University Hospitals to reopen the facility.
So where are we with high school athletics and Covid-19? To answer that question, I turned to Rootstown High School athletic director, golf and baseball coach Keith Waesch to take a look at where we've been in the last year-plus and where we're going with respect to the upcoming 2021-22 school year, particularly the rapidly approaching fall sports season, as we grind through a two steps forward, one step back post-pandemic America.
At the height of the pandemic, UH Portage Medical Center had to reconfigure its morgue to accommodate the surge of Covid-19 victims. And they feared there would be more.
Commissioners removed Covid restrictions, including social distancing and mask requirements, as of June 2 in all offices under the commissioners' control.