CRANBERRY TWP — Two weeks after passing a back-to-school plan with voluntary but recommended masking, and two days before the beginning of the school year, the Seneca Valley School Board will convene a special meeting Monday to discuss masking.

In an alert on its website, the district informed parents and community members of the meeting, which will be conducted 7 p.m. Monday in the Intermediate High School auditorium, and which is being convened in “consideration of Butler County recently moving to the 'high' level of community transmission, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The CDC's “high” designation is the highest level of community transmission. Under that definition, the county must have either 100 or more cases per 100,000 residents, a positivity rate of at least 10%, or both, within the past 10 days.

A lower level, called “substantial,” requires between 50 and 99 cases per 100,000 residents, a positivity rate between 8% and 9.9%, or both, in the past 10 days.

The Aug. 9 Health & Safety Plan, approved by a 5-2 vote of the board, allows for a mask-optional return to school, but directors also saw the possibility of changing the plans due to a surge in COVID-19 cases. On a motion by board vice president Jim Nickel, directors asked school administrators to research and present a rate of local COVID-19 transmission at which the plan would shift from mask-optional to mask-mandatory.

That number was due to the board in September, but the board will reconvene to discuss masks prior to then.

Local figures

Since the pandemic began, directors and superintendent Tracy Vitale have stressed the importance of local data in the decision-making process.

Vitale said at both the Aug. 2 and 9 meetings that the district compiles ZIP code-level data from the state Department of Health to see what the local rates of transmission are.

Of six ZIP codes wholly or primarily served by Seneca, four — 16037, 16046, 16063 and 16066 — have both the case incidence and the positivity rate to be placed within the “high” range. A fifth — 16033 — has a lower incidence rate, but still would be designated as having “high” community transmission due to its test positivity rate.

The sixth — 16024, which has a population in the 200s, according to the Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey — has shown 0 new cases in the past 10 days.