Cloquet board adopts vax or test policy, elects officers and a pay raise

In compliance with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) emergency temporary standard on Covid-19 for employers with 100 or more employees, Cloquet and Carlton school board members both adopted policies meeting the OHSA mandate Monday, Jan. 10. The deadline for policy implementation was Jan. 10, which meant Carlton declared a special meeting for the vote, while Cloquet tackled the issue as part of its regular meeting.

Businesses, including school districts, with more than 100 employees have two options: adopt a policy requiring all staff to be vaccinated, or adopt a policy that if you are not vaccinated, you must mask and submit to weekly testing for Covid.

Cloquet superintendent Michael Cary said a little over 85 percent of the school district employees are fully vaccinated. That includes everyone who is paid by the district, “even temporary employees, coaches, game crew, everybody,” he said.

He recommended the Cloquet board go with the vax or test/mask policy.

“Considering that it would have to go into effect immediately, we could — if we adopted those firmer standards [the vaccination only policy] — lose a number of our employees overnight,” Cary told the board, reminding the board they are already having problems with staff absences and finding substitutes.

Cary also pointed out that the school board is required to adopt a policy or otherwise pay a very heavy penalty for noncompliance. “We’re taking the least restrictive of the two choices we’ve been given,” he said.

Districts have until Feb. 9 to begin implementing the testing requirements for unvaccinated staff.

“It gives us the next month to start collecting information on who is and isn’t vaccinated, and then implement the testing policy,” Cary said. “I feel confident we’ll have a good plan moving forward by then.”

The Cloquet board approved the policy contingent on the case before the U.S. Supreme Court now; if the court reimposes a stay on the OSHA order, the district would pause enforcement of the new policy.

In other Covid-19 news, Cary told the board he was unable to work with county public health officials to help the school district determine “a metric” to determine an acceptable case rate for ending the current masking requirement for all students and staff in all public schools.

The local officials didn’t feel they had the expertise, and the state epidemiologist also wasn’t comfortable providing numbers.

Cary tried to explain what he was trying to achieve.

“I think our goal, at least in my head, is that I can’t control who is and isn’t vaccinated. People are making those choices for themselves,” he said. “We have 85 percent of staff vaccinated and an increasing number of students who are vaccinated. They’ve all had the opportunity to vaccinate if they wish. My goal was to set a case rate that was equivalent to some other acceptable risk that the public takes every day in terms of possible negative outcomes, based on our vaccinated population.”

That was the long way to say that folks who have been waiting for the district to end the mask mandate may have to wait a little longer than the semester break, because the data isn’t there yet. And the highly transmissible omicron variant is breaking records in Minnesota currently.

“I’d like to get the masks off as soon as possible, but with this spike going up, it probably isn’t the time,” said board member Ken Scarbrough.

Board elects officers and a pay raise

Board members elected officers for 2022. Ted Lammi was elected board chair again, along with Nate Sandman as secretary and Dave Battaglia as treasurer.

Board members voted to raise their salary. Board member Hawk Huard motioned to increase board pay to $300 per meeting, or $600 per month, but the motion died for lack of a second, as did a motion by Lammi to go to $275 per month and $60 per meeting. After a motion from Dave Battaglia, board members voted 5-1 to increase pay to $300 a month from $250, and $75 per meeting, up from $50, with Huard voting against it. Over a year, the increase will add up to $5,250, an increase of $1,150 or 28 percent.

In other matters Monday:

-Board members selected the Pine Knot News as the school district’s legal newspaper. The Pine Knot is the only paper within the school district’s legal boundaries.

-Cary also told the board that he was concerned between rampant influenza and Covid that staff absences could mean the district could have to take a one- or two-week pause at some point.

“We had 59 staff out today,” he said, comparing it to an average of about 35 to 40 staff gone per day. They are making contingency plans, he said.

-Cary said enrollment is still 15 or 20 students lower than estimated, so the mid-year budget adjustment may be more conservative than what was expected at the beginning of the school year.