Two school districts are telling the governor he's legally off base in demanding they scrap their quarantine policies.
Attorneys for the Catalina Foothills School District and the Peoria Unified School District wrote that schools are within their legal rights to to keep unvaccinated students who have been exposed to confirmed cases of COVID-19 out of school for up to two weeks.
That is "the appropriate course of action except for students who can demonstrate that they have been fully vaccinated," they wrote in a letter to Kaitlin Harrier, Gov. Doug Ducey's education policy adviser.
More to the point, they said Ducey and his advisers are misreading a new law limiting what schools can and cannot do in cases of the virus.
"Our clients are not acting unlawfully," wrote the attorneys, John Richardson and Denise Lowell-Britt.
Pima County
in agreement
They are not alone in that conclusion.
Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, after consulting with Dr. Francisco Garcia, the county's chief medical officer, is telling local districts the county has "independent statutory authority'' to enact quarantine recommendations that schools can adopt.
Huckelberry called Ducey's claim that districts cannot impose those policies "a serious stretch of the imagination (that) endangers public health,'' particularly when there is no approved COVID-19 vaccine for children younger than 12.
What Ducey is telling schools to do is directly contrary to the policy of the state health department, Chris Kotterman, lobbyist for the Arizona School Boards Association, pointed out. It specifically says that unvaccinated students who have been exposed should be quarantined.
Arizona Department of Health Services spokesman Steve Elliott said Monday he is aware of his department's policy as well as the governor's directive but had no other comment.
Neither side
is wavering
Catalina Foothills is not backing down.
"The statute is plain and we are in full compliance with it,'' district spokeswoman Julie Farbarik said Monday. She said the policy follows the guidance given to schools not just by the county health department but also by the state Department of Health Services and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It remains unchanged,'' she said.
Other school districts are weighing similar policies. For example, the Tempe Union and Kyrene Elementary school districts said they will enact quarantine policies if necessary.
There's no sign that Ducey intends to back down, either, however.
"We expect Arizona's public schools to comply with state law and we're not going to allow anyone to deny Arizona kids an education," gubernatorial spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Monday.
He said Ducey's position remains the same despite the conflicting policy of his own health department.
And if schools refuse to conform to his directive?
"We'll see," said Karamargin.
Law's language
The new law's wording and intent are at issue.
The language, inserted by Republican lawmakers into a budget bill, says that schools "may not require the use of face coverings by students or staff during school hours and on school property.''
A separate provision says schools cannot require students or teachers to be vaccinated for COVID-19 or to wear a face covering to participate in in-person instruction.
No problem here, said the lawyers for the two districts, saying their policies require none of that.
"Nothing in (the law) restricts a school district from following guidance provided by federal, state and local public health authorities with regard to students who have been exposed to COVID-19,'' they wrote.
"These authorities uniformly provide that a temporary quarantine is the appropriate course of action except for students who can demonstrate that they have been fully vaccinated," they continued. "It would not be appropriate or reasonable for school districts to ignore these public health standards, and (the law) does not mandate that they do so.''
Karamargin said the statute is specific to schools and the general public health guidelines are irrelevant.
"It takes into account that school is the safest place for kids, whether they are vaccinated or not, and that they have a right to receive in-person education,'' he said.
"This law prohibits discrimination based on vaccination status. The use of any mitigation strategy should comply with the law,'' he said, saying quarantine is a mitigation strategy.
Parental rights
The school districts' lawyers also rejected suggestions that their policies run afoul of the Parents' Bill of Rights provision of Arizona law.
It declares that parents have a "fundamental right'' to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of their children. It bars any governmental entity from infringing on those rights without demonstrating that there is a "compelling governmental interest'' that is narrowly tailored and cannot be accomplished by less-restrictive means.
"While parents in Arizona are empowered to decide whether and when their children attend public school, they are not permitted to decide which of the school's otherwise lawful healthy and safety policies their children will follow once the decision to attend public school has been made,'' the attorneys said.
And they said that students who are quarantined are not abandoned.
"Both school districts provide instruction and assistance to such students during their temporary absence from school," they wrote.
