Principal Lambert explains why Judge is still in-person
by Ethan Carboni
The new variant of Covid-19 has many Utah public high schools making the switch back to remote learning, yet Judge remains open. Ethan sat down with Principal Lambert to find out why he believes the school remains safe to be open.
Principal Lambert 0:01 - My name is Principal Lambert, principal of Judge Memorial Catholic High School.
Ethan 0:06 - So there's this really big concern about Omicron being a very transmissible virus. And I just wanted to ask you what is the school doing to prevent the spread of Omicron?
Principal Lambert 0:22 - Yeah. I think what we've learned over the years is that it needs to be a priority for us to put in measures that will allow us to have in-person learning. We found in-person learning over the last two years to be the most valuable. A lot of people had moments of enjoying at-home learning or maybe enjoyed it for a quarter or a semester, but ultimately, we recognize that our best learning comes when students are actually on campus. We want to try to protect that as much as we can. We've been one of the few schools, the only high school I know of, that have had a mandatory mask mandate for the entire entire school year. We find that's one of the most important ways to stop the spread of COVID. Now we have teammates in all this – our students. I think people have understood the value of that and so, for the most part, we have people wearing their masks. But we still do have to police a little bit and try to make sure that students are taking that seriously. So but I would say that we've had really good partners with our students to be able to make that happen. We're spreading students out in the cafeteria [during lunch] and opening up some more spaces. We think that's an area where masks are down, people are chatting, and that's a high risk time. So being able to give people enough space during lunch to be able to eat and not have this spread easily is another way to try to counter that.
Ethan 2:27 - In the lunch room, I know that the seniors have moved upstairs to the library, and that opened up more room and cafeteria as a whole. However, it seems that students aren't actually spreading out anymore. They're just staying together. So how are you guys planning to actually make it so that students to spread out and that there is a bit of space between everyone?
Principal Lambert 2:50 - Can you imagine if we all kind of regulated that? where it wasn't just a dean or a principal walking around saying “spread out” – like if we self kind of regulated. But I would love to see student leaders also saying, "Let's spread out guys,” so it doesn't just seem like it's just coming down from the adults in the building.
Ethan 3:34 - Do you think that's realistic?
Principal Lambert 3:37 - Gosh, it would be nice, right? I'd love for student leaders to step up in that. I think what we can do is provide the space. We go through the cafeteria, we talk to people about spreading out, we talk to people about wearing their masks. We're going to continue to do that. We've increased the number of people who are on lunch duty, things like that, but yeah, I mean, we'd love to be able to get to a point where everyone spreads out on their own because they understand how serious this is.
Ethan 4:15 - Okay. And what's your policy about allowing people back to school that have had previously or currently have Covid?
Principal Lambert 4:23 - Active case students are quarantining. So we follow the lead of the Utah Health department which. Any time when we test somebody and they test positive, we report that to the health department, then follow their guidance on how long it's going to take until they can come back.
Ethan 4:43 - Okay, and I know that this has been a thing about the Catholic Diocese, not allowing some people in or not really allowing some people into Zoom, but saying that only people that currently have COVID can stay at home.
Principal Lambert 4:58 - Yeah.
Ethan 4:59 - But I have to ask you, people who have relatives or family that are immune compromised, or quarantining for other reasons: How are we justifying keeping them home and not allowing them on Zoom?
Principal Lambert 5:11 - Well, the Zoom option hasn't been available all year, so nothing's changed in that manner. I understand the point of the question though. Should there be a Zoom option for all students? Right now the Salt Lake Diocese has said no, and that comes from a quorum of principals, supporting teachers who want to continue to have in-person learning as the number one option. That was something that was brought up last Thursday when we decided to start allowing for those who were affected that had COVID to be able to open up that Zoom option. So that's probably a pretty good intermediate step and providing support for the number of kids who are gone, but not going back to where we were in 2020-21 where anyone could opt in to them.
Ethan 6:19 - Okay, what our dances and extracurricular activities going to look like from here on or until this curve's over?
Principal Lambert 6:25 - I'm like everybody wanting this wave to quickly decrease, to pass by. We're not in the mode of canceling anything. At the moment. I think we're kind of in a read and react, to be able to say, “how do we create the safest environment right now,” but let's not, let's not all of a sudden jump in and say we're gonna cancel everything ahead because I think we won't need to. I feel like we're in a situation right now where we've got 92% of our students vaccinated. I recognize that a lot of these are breakthrough cases, but I think what we want to do is try to maintain stability and keep all of those things that we had in place.
Ethan 7:21 - And given the fact that we're trying not to cancel anything, and the Salt Lake County has issued a mask mandate stating that everyone should now wear respirators which are KN95s or N95s. How is Judge helping to meet that goal? Like how are we giving out a KN95s? Or what are we doing?
Principal Lambert 7:43 - About an hour ago I picked up 1,000 KN95s. So what we're going to need to happen is if we give out one to two KN95s, we need students to treat those properly. There'll be some direction on how you can reuse those. So KN95s for the most part, we don't just consider them to be disposable. Instead, we want people to care for them properly so that you can rotate through those and be able to ultimately use two or three masks and get you through two to three months, until they wear out.
Ethan 8:27 - Okay, but given the fact that KN95s only last for about 12 hours, on average. How are we providing them?
Principal Lambert 8:42 - We're we're ordering as many as we can. We did get 1,000 today, but you can imagine if the school is providing one for each student every day, we would go through 1,000 in a day and a half. If students have their own KN95s, that's great. We've got a number of students that have said “don't worry about ordering one for me, I've got access KN95s.” So we're going to make sure everybody has access. At the same time, we want people to treat these with respect so that we're not getting one for each person every single day, and just throwing those away at the end.
Ethan 9:32 - So is there going to be like a log or just are they goning to be distributed? Or how are we keeping track of who gets a mask who doesn't get a mask and like? if people just throw them away, or don't care about them? Do they go back to having a cloth mask?
Principal Lambert 9:48 - We've provided disposable masks throughout the whole year. When COVID began we gave every student multiple cloth JM masks. I think ultimately what happens is we have some disposables that continue to be used, and we have students that use those every single day, come in every single day and get a disposable mask. We'd love to have that kind of same partnership of treating those well, treating those with respect because ultimately, we can only get our hands on so many, so we want to make sure that we're treating them as well.
Ethan 10:27 - Okay, that's all the questions I really have.
Principal Lambert 10:31 - I think this is a reminder we're all in this together. Having family support from home, promoting small gatherings or no gatherings. I think whenever we take risks ourselves that can ultimately create a greater risk at the school. It's going to take each one of us to try to create the safest learning environment possible. This won't be forever, but it is for right now. We can take care of each other by putting ourselves in the safest situation possible right now.
