After Johnston board drops stipulations, all county schools can soon go mask optional
Johnston County is dropping conditions that could have resulted in some schools still requiring face masks after this week.
The Johnston County school board voted 6-0 on Monday to drop the stipulation that less than 4% of a school’s staff and students had to test positive for COVID-19 and/or be quarantined for it to go mask optional starting Feb. 21.
District leaders said the stipulation is no longer needed now that state health officials have revised health guidelines to end contact tracing and reduce who has to quarantine after a COVID-19 exposure.
Next week will mark the first time since before the COVID pandemic hit schools in March 2020 that face coverings have not been required in North Carolina’s seventh-largest school district. Face masks will still be required in school buses due to federal rules.
Stipulations initially included
After months of debate, the board had voted 6-1 on Feb. 8 to make face masks optional on a school-by-school basis starting Feb. 21. The district planned to tell families on a daily basis if the exclusion rate for individual schools had risen above 4%.
The inclusion of stipulations upset parent Cara Chester. She served notice on the board last week threatening to file a liability claim if the district didn’t make changes.
“We the people are fed up and we will no longer accept it,” Chester said at last week’s board meeting. “We want masks optional permanently with no contact tracing. We do not want vaccines forced upon us or our children.”
Two days after the board’s vote, the state Department of Health and Human Services announced major changes to the Strong Schools Toolkit.
David Pearce, Johnston County’s assistant superintendent of auxiliary and administrative services, said Monday that the district will not have to resume contact tracing or quarantine people who were close contacts of individuals who had tested positive for COVID-19.
According to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard, 156 students and 26 school employees are under active quarantine. Pearce said the district will only report positive cases to the health department and on the dashboard moving forward.
Kay Carroll, the lone board member who voted against ending the face mask mandate, was absent Monday.
This story was originally published February 14, 2022 at 5:20 PM.
