Amid dueling petitions and parent feedback, Wake schools must decide on mask rules
As the Wake County school board hears from both passionate pro-mask and anti-mask parents, leaders will decide Tuesday whether to continue requiring face coverings to be worn in schools.
At least a quarter of the state’s school districts have made masks optional — part of the growing political divide over how to handle the coronavirus pandemic.
The Wake school board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on health guidance recommendations for the 2021-22 school year. School board chairman Keith Sutton said that will include whether to continue require face coverings or to make them optional.
“We will consider the recommendations coming from staff, which are backed by their conversations with state and in this case a little bit more local input from health officials, the ABC Collaborative, information from the CDC and other guidance,” Sutton said in an interview Monday. “We’ll also look at the information from our schools and make a decision.”
Sutton said he realizes the decision will be unpopular with some in the community.
One petition says make masks optional
Two dueling online petitions have each drawn thousands of signatures asking Wake County to either continue to mandate face masks or to make them optional.
The Wake County Republican Party is trying to get 5,000 signatures by Monday on a petition asking the district to make face masks optional. The petition had more than 3,700 signatures as of early Monday afternoon.
“Parents who wish to send their children to school in masks should do so if they choose,” according to the petition sponsored by the Carolina Teachers Alliance, a group that’s trying to be a conservative alternative to the N.C. Association of Educators.
“Parents who wish to send their children to school unmasked should do so if they choose, without discrimination or penalty to the child by WCPSS.”
The petition also says Wake shouldn’t promote students getting the COVID-19 vaccine or allow vaccination clinics to be held on school property. While most doctors and medical groups say the COVID-19 vaccine is safe, the petition claims that they are “experimental medical treatments.”
One petition says require masks
Meanwhile, more than 4,000 signatures have been collected as of early Monday afternoon for a petition urging Wake to continue requiring masks until all students have access to the COVID-19 vaccine. Currently, only children as young as 12 can be vaccinated.
“Please help us keep politics far away from the health of our children, families, friends and community at large,” according to the petition. “Please help keep our families, friends and community safe, especially with the spread of the new Delta variant.”
The delta variant has helped lead to a surge in North Carolina and nationally in the number of new COVID cases and hospitalizations.
Two Wake County year-round schools: North Forest Pines Elementary in Raleigh and Turner Creek Elementary in Cary have active COVID-19 clusters, according to the latest state health report. A “cluster” is defined as five or more linked cases in the same facility within 14 days.
Wake has seen an uptick in COVID-19 cases since year-round students began a new school year in July.
NC now urging everyone to mask at school
Gov. Roy Cooper had required that face masks be worn in all K-12 public and private schools last school year. Cooper dropped the statewide school mask mandate, saying the decision would be left up to individual schools.
Last month, the initial new state health guidance only recommended that school districts require masks be worn in elementary and middle schools. But the state revised the guidance last week to say all students and staff should wear face masks in schools, including in high school and regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated.
The new state guidance matches updated CDC guidance saying everyone should be masked at school due to the growing number of COVID cases. The new CDC guidance also says vaccinated people should wear masks in public indoor places in counties where’s there high or substantial spread of COVID-19 in the community — which includes much of the state.
At a press conference last week, Cooper said unvaccinated people were “driving this resurgence and getting themselves and other people sick.”
Partisan split on masking
The decision on masking has taken a partisan divide.
At least 31 of the state’s 115 school districts have decided to make face masks optional for this fall, according to a database maintained by the N.C. School Boards Association. Those mask-optional districts are in predominantly Republican-leaning areas, such as Cabarrus, Columbus, Johnston and Union counties.
Watauga County is currently the only mask-optional district where Joe Biden got the majority of voters in last fall’s presidential election. Donald Trump got the most votes in the other 30 districts.
Columbus County has both one of the state’s highest COVID-19 transmission rates and one of the lowest vaccination rates, The News & Observer has reported. Both Columbus County Schools and Whiteville City Schools are making masks optional in school while still requiring them to be worn in buses.
School districts in Democratic-leaning areas, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Durham, Guilford and Winston-Salem/Forsyth have opted to continue requiring masks. Wake County is now heavily Democratic with 62% of voters choosing Biden last fall.
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 3:38 PM.
