Wake County keeps face mask mandate in schools for students and teachers
Wake County students and school employees will need to continue wearing face masks in schools — regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19 or don’t want to mask up.
The Wake County school board unanimously voted Tuesday to back the recommendation from staff to continue universal masking through at least the start of the new school year that will begin for most students later this month. The vote came after around 200 people on both sides of the face mask debate rallied in the rain outside the board meeting.
Board members and administrators said requiring masks will reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19 that would lead to students and staff facing 14-day quarantines at home.
School officials also cited reasons such as how most students aren’t yet vaccinated for COVID-19, the recent rise in cases from the delta variant and potential coronavirus health risks for students. It also matches recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics to require everyone at school to wear masks.
“This decision for me I’m making is saying we have a best option of keeping at the end of the day our students in-person learning and remaining in-person learning and decreasing the time that these students are quarantined if we make the decision to mandate masks,” said school board member Monika Johnson-Hostler.
“It sucks. There is no easy way to say that.”
The vote has no end date on the mask mandate. But Superintendent Cathy Moore promised to review quarterly if conditions have changed to ease the mask requirement.
“I will commit us to an exit plan, an exit strategy,” said board chairman Keith Sutton, who pledged they “will not be wearing masks forever.”
The mask mandate could also come with a new requirement for unvaccinated student-athletes to get twice a week COVID-19 testing. No decision has been made yet about requiring the new testing.
Mask use has continued to be required at schools that started classes in July, such as year-round schools. Students at traditional-calendar schools will begin Aug. 23.
Students and school employees can seek mask exemptions, such as due to a disability. But mask opponents complain that Wake has been strict about not approving mask exemptions.
Heated emotions over requiring masks
Two dueling online petitions have each drawn thousands of signatures. In addition to the petitions, 482 written public comments were submitted to the board meeting about masking.
The Wake County Republican Party backed a petition that had received more than 4,600 signatures as of Tuesday evening urging the district to not require face masks. Speakers called requiring masks “as pure theater” that isn’t helping students.
“We need to stop acting like COVID is an emergency for our children, and it needs to begin with ending the school mask mandate,” Will Langdon, a Wake parent, told the board on Tuesday. “This mandate is hurting our children educationally, socially, psychologically and medically.”
A different petition had more than 5,500 signatures as of Tuesday evening urging Wake to continue to require masks until all students have access to the COVID-19 vaccine. Currently, only children as young as 12 can be vaccinated.
“We stand before you as physicians knowing that masks work,” said Dr. Michele Benoit-Wilson, who stood with a group of other doctors during public comments. “We know that masks work because we are here after taking care of hundreds and thousands of COVID patients in the hospitals.
“And we care about our children as well. Please help us protect them by making masking mandatory.”
Chants of “free the smiles” and “wear your mask to keep us safe” rang out at the competing outdoor rallies. During the board meeting, Sutton repeatedly asked the audience to show respect for the speakers.
The fight in Wake mirrors a statewide debate over whether face masks should continue to be required in schools. Unlike last year, North Carolina is allowing individual school districts and charter schools to decide on their masking policies.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina Pediatric Society released an open letter encouraging school districts to provide daily in-person learning and to continue requiring masks be worn in schools. The group is the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Masking is a critical component of safe, in-person learning right now,” Dr. Christoph R. Diasio, president of the N.C. Pediatric Society, wrote in the letter. “As medical experts, we are deeply concerned about the quick-spreading nature of the Delta variant and the increasing hospitalization of children with COVID-19. Masks add an important layer of safety to in-person learning.”
At least 38 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 and district websites. In all but one of those 38 districts, the majority of voters backed Republican Donald Trump in last fall’s presidential election.
Districts that are requiring masks, like Wake County, are in predominantly Democratic-leaning areas where voters backed Joe Biden.
Masking until more kids are vaccinated
School administrators say they’d want to see several things happen before ending the mask mandate, including the COVID-19 vaccination rate in the school-age population reaching 70% to 90%. Currently, 55% of students ages 12 to 17 have received at least one dose. Younger students are still not vaccine eligible.
The GOP-backed petition 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.”
School officials also point to how there were three COVID-19 clusters in district schools in July and one so far in August. A cluster is five or more linked cases within a 14-day period.
Dr. Danny Benjamin, co-director of the ABC Science Collaborative, said the delta variant is so much more transmissible that schools will be more likely to switch to online instruction if there’s no mask requirement.
The ABC Science Collaborative was formed by Duke University to help school districts deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
Critics of masking and the COVID-19 vaccine argue that coverings aren’t necessary because children are less at risk than adults from the virus.
But Wake school officials say the mortality rate for COVID-19 is two to five deaths per 100,000 students. Wake, which is North Carolina’s largest school district, has 160,000 students.
Board member Karen Carter asked how many Wake students have died from COVID-19 in the past 17 months. Benjamin said he didn’t have an exact number but that a “fair estimate” is a couple per hundred thousand students.
Wake also says that roughly 10% of students develop long COVID-19 (a wide range of new, returning, or ongoing health problems people can experience four or more weeks after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19).
Wake says it can legally require masks
Opponents of requiring masks also argue that requiring masks violates federal law.
“Liability of adverse effects to the health of the child for such a mandate would fall on school board members individually and personally, and the superintendent supporting a mask mandate policy,” according to the petition calling for making masks optional.
But Jonathan Blumberg, the Wake school board’s attorney, says the district has the authority to require masks.
“As of the date of this memo, we are not aware of any state or federal laws, regulations, or court decisions that would restrict a North Carolina school district’s authority to require face coverings,” Blumberg wrote in a memo to the district.
Requiring COVID testing for some students?
The ABC Collaborative is recommending twice a week COVID-19 testing for students and staff who participate in extracurricular activities, which includes sports and band. The exception would be if a person could show they’ve been vaccinated.
Wake school officials say they have not yet decided whether to implement the ABC testing recommending.
But Blumberg said Wake can require COVID-19 testing for students who participate in athletics and for staff as well. He also said in his memo that Wake can require proof of vaccination to be exempted from wearing a mask and to reduce the amount of time they’re quarantined if they’re exposed to COVID-19,
Blumberg also said Wake can also generally require staff to be vaccinated for COVID-19. But he said Wake can’t require students to be vaccinated for COVID-19.
This story was originally published August 3, 2021 at 10:50 AM.
