Time will tell whether the Lakeland Joint School District is taking a brave step or a reckless one in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the school year begins on Sept. 8, the 4,300 students in the Rathdrum-Twin Lakes area will attend classes for up to four days a week with no requirement to wear masks – even on buses.

“There’s a lot of anxiety out there, and rightly so,” said Jason Bradbury, who teaches sixth grade at Twin Lakes Elementary School and also serves as president of the local teachers’ union, the Lakeland Education Association.

The model isn’t unique to Idaho, where resistance to masks has been strong.

However, Lakeland’s model is an outlier in the Inland Northwest, where other larger districts have approved distance learning or a hybrid solution and with masks mandated.

During a pivotal meeting on July 28, Lakeland board members opted to prioritize the wishes of parents over the recommendations of health officials and the state teachers’ union.

“I don’t see that we have the authority to make children wear masks,” board member Michelle Thompson said during that meeting. “We don’t have that authority at all.”

In most respects, the plan approved on July 28 is similar to those OK’d this week in neighboring Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls.

All three districts will employ a four-color protocol – Green (full return), Yellow (students back four days a week), Orange (twice-a-week in-person learning) and Red (full-distance learning) depending on infection rates and other factors in Kootenai County.

Both Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls will require masks in the yellow and orange categories, and will start the year in the latter category.

Lakeland’s model, which also covers teachers, calls for “social distancing to the greatest extent possible and face coverings (masks/shields) will be recommended where social distancing cannot be maintained.”

However, it’s also unclear how the district will be able to maintain at least 6 feet of social distancing in a classroom setting; those details were not clarified in the district’s current back-to-school plan.

On Tuesday, the Lakeland board is expected to decide on whether to begin the year at the orange or yellow stage.

If it’s the latter, students will be in school four days a week with no mask requirement.

The board also could make other changes on Tuesday, based on feedback from the Panhandle Health District, employees and other stakeholders, Superintendent Becky Meyer said Thursday.

As it stands, the back-to-school plan on masks allows parents to ignore the recommendations from teachers and health professionals. It also makes no provision for on-site testing. Instead, parents are “encouraged to screen students every morning before attending.”

The plan has raised concerns in the region and beyond.

In a letter to fellow teachers last month, Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly said that “reopening our schools safely will require modifications to the traditional way of doing things, all of which come with a price.”

“Providing face coverings, cleaning supplies, desk dividers, and achieving smaller class sizes to ensure physical distancing should be minimum requirements,” McInelly said.

At the Panhandle Health District, spokeswoman Katherine Hoyer emphasized that while the district recommends students wear masks in school, “ultimately that decision is up to the schools.”

During the July 28 meeting, Meyer and the board reviewed Lakeland’s back-to-school plan and focused on the issue of masks.

Lakeland’s original plan stated that students would be “expected” to wear masks, but that was swiftly amended.

Meyer opened the discussion by citing a poll (conducted before the Kootenai County mask mandate on July 23) that showed 46.6% of Lakeland parents said they didn’t want their children to wear masks in school.

“I feel that leans itself toward parents wanting to have some say in what the students are doing in the classroom,” Meyer said.

“I would hate to see that many parents say, ‘Well, if you’re going to have masks, then I’m not sending my kid to school.’”

At that point, board member Ramona Grissom expressed fears that children who have been told they couldn’t wear masks for medical or other reasons could be “branded with a scarlet letter” and perhaps bullied.

“We certainly don’t want them to be ostracized,” board member Rob Irons said.

That opened the door to changing the language.

Thompson emphasized that there is no national or state mandate for masks in schools, and that even the Centers for Disease Control merely recommends that students wear masks.

According to Thompson, the absence of a “harsh, totalitarian” mandate from the CDC means that school districts were not obligated to make students wear masks.

“We’re not the mask police,” said Grissom, who said that the current mask mandate in Kootenai County isn’t being enforced anyway.

At that point, Irons suggested that the language on masks be changed from “expected” to “strongly recommended.”

Thompson balked.

“How about just ‘recommended?’” she said. “Because if we’re strongly recommending something, it means that we are leaning more toward expected.”

“I would like to believe that the vast majority of parents out there are reasonable and that they’re not going to send their kids to school when they’re sick,” Thompson said.

Meyer and board members noted that social distancing will be difficult on school buses, where masks also will not be required.

“Whether the parents want their kids to wear (masks) is up to them,” Meyer said.

Lakeland’s back-to-school plan has left many teachers “nervous,” said Bradbury, who added that the faculty is split on the issue of masks.

Bradbury said most teachers are hoping the district will start the school year in the “Orange” category, with students attending class just two days a week.

That would mitigate the effect of the decision on masks.

“The overall fear is safety,” Bradbury said. “We would feel safer in the classroom in the Orange model.”

The district will also offer a comprehensive distance-learning model, the Lakeland Online Academy, for students who wish to go completely online. As of Tuesday, about 250 students had applied to the online academy.