Doctors, parents petition for North Carolina school mask mandate
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Charlotte 2021 Back to School
Due to COVID-19, masks are required at CMS and adults are encouraged to get vaccinated. There’s also a push among educators ad parents to catch up students who lost academic progress during the pandemic.
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As supporters join doctors statewide pleading with Gov. Roy Cooper to require masks in all North Carolina classrooms, a group of local physicians continues to lobby school board members in one of the few Charlotte-area districts leaving masks optional.
North Carolina Physicians For Masks late last week started a petition on change.org urging Cooper “come to the aid of communities” and issue an executive order for a statewide mask mandate or statewide mask mandate for schools to blunt the spread of COVID-19.
The petition reads: “Virtual learning took a toll on educators, children, and parents, and experts agree that every effort should be made to return kids to the classroom and to do so using a layered mitigation strategy, which includes vaccination of all who are eligible, and universal masking. Over the past few weeks, we have seen ‘mask optional’ approaches fail time and time again.”
Last week’s largest coronavirus outbreak reported in a North Carolina school or daycare was in Union County, at a Monroe charter school. There, leaders reversed their earlier decision to leave masks optional after a cluster of cases grew to more than 100, most among students.
As of Monday, more than 1,200 people had signed the petition, including many doctors. Included is a group of physicians from Union County, where a majority of school board members have twice voted to leave masks optional. Masks will be required on school buses. Those against a mask mandate have said the decision should be left to parents and have said positivity and hospitalization rates in the 5-18-year-old age group in Union County have remained lower.
The Observer reported last week less than half of the population in Union County is vaccinated, and its positivity rate is slightly higher than the state average.
The percentage of fully vaccinated people, according to state health data, is at 43% in Union County. For comparison, the two largest counties in North Carolina, Mecklenburg and Wake, are at 51% and 60% fully vaccinated, respectively, according to data updated Friday.
Cooper has called out people who are unvaccinated as largely responsible for rising infections, as the country sees a resurgence in cases and hospitalizations. And he’s required some state employees show proof of vaccinations.
But he’s stopped short, so far, of reinstating a statewide mask mandate. With back-to-school season in full swing, 28 out of 115 districts in North Carolina aren’t requiring masks in school, The (Raleigh) News & Observer reports. Based on enrollment, mask mandates will be in use across districts that have close to 3 of every 4 public school students in North Carolina, the News & Observer found.
Around Charlotte, school boards in Catawba, Iredell and Union counties have opted to not require masks.
Union County Public Schools began class Monday.
A group of 35 physicians, all who say they have children who attend public schools in Union County, sent a letter to the district’s school board charging members of disregarding expertise and “endangering us all” with the decision to leave masks optional in classrooms.
The letter was signed “UCPS Physician Parents” and sent to the school board. They cite rising hospitalizations, overloaded medical staff and emergency rooms, and child safety as chief concerns.
Eight of the doctors in the group shared their identity with The Charlotte Observer but asked to remain anonymous, with one saying the group fears retaliation.
“Unfortunately in the recent past, those physicians and healthcare professionals who advocate for masks in schools have been subject to online/social media harassment for expressing their views. Some have even been the target of verbal/physical threats at their places of work for ‘speaking up’ for masks in schools,” the person wrote.
Union County mask debate
For now, students and staff in Union County public schools won’t be required to wear face coverings, despite a growing body of research showing strict mask policies not only help protect children from COVID-19 but also limit interruptions to the school year by reducing the need for proactive quarantine measures.
Last week, seven members of the nine-member Union County BOE voted against making masks mandatory in schools. Board members John Kirkpatrick IV and Joseph Morreale voted in favor of a mandate.
The board is expected to revisit masks at its scheduled meeting Sept. 7, where it’s requested Dennis Joyner, Union County’s public health director, join the meeting.
UCPS board chairperson Melissa Merrell, who shared data at the meeting last week regarding COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among the ages 5-18 group in Union County, said since the meeting she and the board have received personal attacks “on my character and our board.”
“All nine of us are highly-educated and care deeply about UCPS and serve for those reasons,” she told the Observer. “We serve and do the best job we can with the professional experiences we bring to the table.”
But the group of physicians, in a letter of concern, also addressed to the superintendent and assistant superintendent, say despite recommendations from them, the local health department, the state’s department of health and human services, national health advisory organizations and the healthcare community at large “seven of you have repeatedly voted against universal masking — a foundational infection prevention measure in what should be a multi-layered approach to opening our school doors safely.”
“I voted with six other Board Members to remain Mask Optional based on Union County data that we receive each day,” Merrell said. “I took into consideration that this August will be very different than last August when we reopened schools and the vaccine was not available.
“Since that time, all UCPS Employees were offered the vaccine in February and March 2021, including our (substitutes.) This summer, parents also had the choice to vaccinate their children ages 12 and over.”
The physicians contend masks are a layer of protection. In the letter, they also said: 30% of adolescents aged 12-17 have been vaccinated and the current positivity rate for Union County is 14.6%. Mid-week last week, the positivity rate was 13.9%.
Union County enrolls roughly 41,000 students.
While mask rules and COVID-19 safety protocols have been intensely political and divisive nationwide for much of the pandemic, the overwhelming majority of public school leaders in North Carolina have instituted mask requirements, a recent analysis by The (Raleigh) News & Observer shows.
Some local governments, including Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, too, are again requiring masks indoors in public.
This story was originally published August 23, 2021 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Doctors, parents petition for North Carolina school mask mandate."
