Doylestown Health Urges Central Bucks To Rethink Safety Plan, Act With 'Empathy'

DOYLESTOWN, PA — After voting down updates to the Central Bucks School District health and safety plan last week, the district's board of school directors got a letter from Doylestown Health medical experts encouraging them to reconsider.

At the beginning of last week, motions to update to the health and safety plan in Central Bucks schools failed. In several 6-3 votes along party lines, Central Bucks' school directors rejected guidance that would put schools in line with recommendations from the CDC, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

With little discussion or input from the Republican members who voted against the proposed changes, the board defaulted to keeping shorter quarantine and isolation times in Central Bucks' mask-optional schools.

Doylestown Health's President and CEO James Brexler and Chief Medical Officer Scott Levy felt compelled to weigh in and contact the board, as detailed in a letter shared online by the Bucks County Courier Times.

"I would strongly encourage the Central Bucks Schools to take reasonable steps to assure that transmission of virus within the schools is mitigated, and that actively infected children do not return to class until there is a reasonable likelihood that the individual is no longer actively infected and thus likely to infect others," the medical experts wrote. "The impact to those with comorbidities, immunocompromised and otherwise at risk, as well as those requiring healthcare for other reasons will be profound."

They also said that Doylestown Hospital has been overwhelmed during the omicron surge, and was treating 65 patients suffering from active COVID-19 infections on Friday. What's more, the representatives said 250 of their staff members were unable to work due to COVID-19 infection in the prior 10 days.

"The CBSD has demonstrated the ability to assure an exemplary education for our children, including a robust list of academic areas, athletics, arts, and many others," Brexler and Levy wrote. "Certainly, included is the need to educate the student population in the concept and importance of civic and community responsibility."

Other health bodies have felt compelled to respond to the safety plans of Central Bucks and area districts in recent weeks, too.

When asked, in one of his first public comments in months at a Thursday meeting before the Bucks County Board of Health, director of the Bucks County Department of Health David Damsker said the CDC guidance is a "good basis" for local safety plans.

Central Bucks is one of several schools which has ceased contact tracing, deferring to the county health department. But Damsker said at the meeting that his department is not conducting regular contact tracing, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.

“Right now, we’re contact tracing for outbreaks or bigger things,” he said. "It’s not designed for chronic, common diseases like COVID is now."

Central Bucks' current health and safety plan provides that people in the district who are symptomatic should remain home at least three days, and return masked through the seventh day if symptoms resolve; that those who are asymptomatic with one-time exposure should come to school normally; and that those with ongoing exposures should return to school but wear a mask for seven days from the date of last exposure to their household member.

None of this guidance is in accordance with wisdom from the CDC, or even with more lax guidance from CHOP PolicyLab, which still urges universal masking.

"I am in support of longer quarantine and isolation times and also a temporary period of required masking for all students, staff and visitors," board member Karen Smith, who voted in favor of proposed revisions to the plan along with Tabitha Dell’Angelo and Mariam Mahmud, told Patch in an email Tuesday.

She added, "It is embarrassing to be at a point where hospital officials find it necessary to advise us that our plan is not in the best interest of our community."

Other school board members did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brexler and Levy urged the board to take a possible update to the safety plan as an opportunity to model thoughtful behavior for young people.

"[T]he impact of these measures extends far beyond the health of the individual students; it transcends population groups and is a classic illustration and lesson as to the importance of empathy and community responsibility," they wrote.

Related: Central Bucks Board Votes Against CDC's COVID-19 Guidance

Be the first to know what's going on in Doylestown when you subscribe to Patch.