Where do Triangle school systems stand on masks? Which districts statewide have switched?
North Carolina school districts are under pressure to end their face mask mandates in the next few weeks.
On Thursday, Gov. Roy Cooper called on school districts to end mask requirements in March. Cooper’s message came the same day that state lawmakers passed legislation to allow families to opt out of school mask requirements.
Here’s a look at how school mask mandates stand in the Triangle and across the state.
Mask rules at Triangle schools
Wake County: The district announced Friday that masks will become optional in the coming days. No specific date has been set yet, but the school board will discuss the issue at a special meeting on Tuesday.
Johnston County: Face masks will become optional in schools starting Monday, Feb. 21.
Durham: School board voted Feb. 10 to continue masking.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro: Andy Jenks, a district spokesman, said the school board will get a COVID update on March 3 and could make changes then. But he said “we have a ways to go” before lifting the indoor school mask mandate while Orange County still has a high COVID transmission rate.
Orange County: The school board will review Monday a plan to move to optional masking if multiple criteria are met, such as student vaccination rates reaching a certain level and the COVID-19 community transmission rate dropping significantly.
Chatham County: The school board has said that, if the metrics continue to improve, they can look at going mask optional around March 7.
Franklin County: School board voted Friday to make masks optional starting Monday, Feb. 21
Majority of NC districts mask optional
For the first time since the start of the COVID pandemic, the majority of the state’s 115 school districts are no longer requiring face masks.
At least 64 districts are mask optional, according to news reports and a spreadsheet maintained by the N.C. School Boards Association. At least 25 school districts have voted in the past week to end mask requirements now that state health officials have eased school contact tracing and quarantine requirements.
The 51 districts that still require masks include the state’s four largest school systems: Wake County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford County and Winston-Salem/Forsyth.
Mask optional districts
This story was originally published February 17, 2022 at 5:07 PM.
