More NC schools require masks again as COVID-19 cases rise among students, teachers
School districts across North Carolina are requiring face masks again in response to a rise in COVID-19 cases that is also causing thousands of students to return to remote instruction.
At least 22 North Carolina school districts have decided in the past two weeks to reverse their decision to make face coverings optional in schools. School leaders in those districts say they have to temporarily mandate masks again because so many students and teachers are testing positive for COVID-19 or are being quarantined due to exposure to the virus.
“It’s doing something to reduce the number of people we’re sending home that need to be in school,” Cabarrus County school board member Rob Walter said before this week’s vote to require masks again. “I mean, 1,200 kids (under quarantine) is just too many. We’ve got to do something.”
Cabarrus County is about 150 miles west of Raleigh. It’s among a growing number of school districts that reversed course on masking due to the omicron variant producing record numbers of new COVID-19 cases.
Other school districts that have reinstated mask mandates since students returned last week from winter break include Brunswick, Craven, Henderson, Lenoir, Moore, New Hanover, Pitt and Sampson counties.
Most school districts require masks
Unlike last school year when the state mandated face masks, this school year the decision is left up to each school district and charter school. The state Department of Health and Human Services recommends that schools require face coverings and only consider making them optional when community COVID transmission rates drop to low or moderate levels.
Now, 85 of North Carolina’s 115 school districts require face coverings, according to a database maintained by the N.C. School Boards Association. Those districts represent 71% of the state’s K-12 public school enrollment, according to a News & Observer analysis.
The 30 school districts that don’t require masks represent 20% of the state’s enrollment. All the districts not requiring masks are in counties won by Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The remaining 9% of students in the state are in charter schools, laboratory schools and the Innovative School District.
Some schools switch to online classes
The rise in COVID cases has caused at least 26 schools to switch all of their students temporarily to remote instruction, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. In addition to the school-level closures, DPI says nine grade levels and 19 classrooms at other schools have switched to online because of COVID.
The closures are impacting 1,055 school employees and 11,263 students. This list doesn’t include Carroll Middle School in Raleigh, which switched to remote instruction on Friday.
Under a new state law, individual schools or classes can only switch to remote instruction if COVID exposures lead to not having enough staff or too many students quarantined. The new law makes it difficult, if not impossible, for entire school districts to switch to virtual instruction due to COVID-19.
Four schools in Moore County, located 60 miles south of Raleigh, are in danger of switching to virtual instruction due to high COVID infection rates. The news helped persuade the Moore County school board to reinstate a mask mandate this week.
“Masks are most effective when everyone is wearing a mask,” said board member Ed Dennison. “We wear a mask to protect each other, not just to protect ourselves.”
Dennison’s comments drew angry responses from some audience members who wanted Moore County to continue making masks optional. Critics of requiring face masks have shown up at school board meetings across the state and nation.
No ‘mask police’
Some school boards have decided this month to stick with making face masks optional despite the increase in COVID-19 cases. The same state law that limits districts from switching to virtual instruction also requires monthly school board votes on face mask policies.
“The board has diligently done everything it can to show that we want parents to have the right to make this decision themselves,” Pender County school board member Ken Smith said at this week’s vote to continue making masks optional.
Pender County is 100 miles south of Raleigh.
The Lincoln County school board not only voted this week to continue its mask-optional policy but to also make sure that teachers don’t order students to wear masks. Lincoln County is 190 miles west of Raleigh.
Under the state’s new relaxed health rules, students who test positive for COVID-19 or who have been exposed to the virus can return to school after five days. But students returning to school are supposed to wear a mask for five days.
School board members said they only want the school nurse to be responsible for seeing if returning students are masked..
“No teacher will be allowed, or administrator will be allowed, to enforce a mask mandate, or be the mask police,” according to the policy adopted by the Lincoln County school board this week.
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 12:50 PM.
