Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools keep indoor masks. Here’s when students can un-mask outside.
Update: The Orange County school board has scheduled a vote for March 7, 2022, that will move up the district’s optional masking plan, spokeswoman Melany Stowe said in an email. The district mandate now could be lifted on Tuesday, instead of Wednesday.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro students and staff won’t have to wear masks outdoors when they go to school Monday, but they will have to wear them indoors for at least another month.
The school board voted unanimously Thursday to lift the district’s outdoor mask mandate on March 7.
The school board then voted 6-1, with board member George Griffin dissenting, to change the district’s indoor mandate to “masks recommended” on April 4. That would be contingent on the county’s COVID-19 transmission rate remaining at “low” or “medium.”
The city schools have had a mask mandate in place both indoors and outdoors since August, when the delta variant sparked a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 infections. But falling infection rates, rising vaccination rates, and changes in local and state policies, including North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s support for ending mask mandates, prompted the board to consider changes.
Superintendent Nyah Hamlett noted there’s no difference between recommending masks and making them optional.
However, the mask recommended language “sends a stronger message in reference to what the school district believes is in the best interest of our school district community,” she said. “Mask optional is really a ‘do what you feel is best for you’ approach, but in practice, that means that you can still make a decision to do as an individual what you believe is best for you.”
Falling COVID-19 rates, transmission
Orange County also is lifting its mask mandate at midnight March 7, followed by the Orange County Schools district, whose board voted last week to make indoor masking optional 72 hours after the county’s mandate is lifted. The county district lifted its outdoor mask mandate in October.
About 80% of Orange County residents have received at least one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, depending on the brand they received. The county has seen 127.29 new COVID cases per 100,000 people in the last seven days, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of new hospital admissions is at 19.
However, the county still remains an area of “high” transmission, and officials have said the mask mandate could be reinstated if COVID-19 metrics don’t continue the decline to “medium” and “low” levels of community spread.
Orange County Health Director Quintana Stewart told the board Thursday that the county actually is closer to a “medium” level of community transmission. The county’s data and the CDC data differ because of a lag in the submission of updated data, she said.
Health officials have urged unvaccinated people and those who are immunocompromised to continue wearing a mask indoors or in crowded areas, and to get vaccinated or seek a booster shot as soon as possible.
The school board weighed staff anxieties, student academic and social-emotional needs, and a desire to give people more time to get vaccinated before making its decisions Thursday.
Brian Link, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Association of Educators, shared a district survey that got 932 responses last week, roughly 65% of which supported keeping the district’s indoor masking rules for now.
Student needs usually outweigh staff needs, school board Chair Deon Temne said, but COVID requires looking at the issue differently and being “a little more empathetic.”
“This isn’t about just educating. This is about the livelihood of everyone here,” Temne said. “They have to be in those classes with the little ones ... and if they get sick, the little ones are going to be home with you, and we know how remote learning went and all the messages we got from parents who really didn’t like that or had major issues with it.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2022 at 10:39 PM.
