Johnston County ends school mask mandate. Here’s when masks will become optional.
Two of North Carolina’s largest school districts are ending their mask mandate amid growing calls across the nation to make face masks optional in schools.
The Johnston County school board voted 6-1 on Tuesday to make face masks optional for students and school employees, starting Feb. 21 on a school-by-basis. The masks will stay optional as long as less than 4% of the school’s staff and students test positive for COVID-19 and/or are quarantined due to exposure to the virus.
Also on Tuesday, the Cumberland County school board voted 5-4 to make face masks optional starting Feb. 16.
This will mark the first time since before the COVID pandemic hit schools in March 2020 that face coverings have not been required in schools in both districts.
“It’s time to give the parents the choice,” said Johnston County board chairman Todd Sutton. “Let them decide on what’s best for their student. Let the staff decide on what’s best for themselves.”
Face masks will still need to be worn on school buses to comply with federal rules.
Board member Kay Carroll was the lone no vote in Johnston County. He said it’s too soon to drop the mask mandate given how high the COVID-19 transmission rate remains in the county.
“I think we’re all getting near the end of the race,” Carroll said. “We’re all getting tired of it.
“But I don’t want us to quit before we finish the race and get to a point where we have a comfort level that the transmission rate won’t go out of sight.”
Johnston County is North Carolina’s seventh-largest school district, with 37,000 students. Cumberland County is the state’s fifth-largest district, with 48,000 students.
States drop mask mandate
The decisions by Johnston and Cumberland counties come as the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon announced plans Monday to lift statewide school mask mandates, The Associated Press reported.
Unlike last school year, North Carolina doesn’t have a statewide school mask mandate. But the state Department of Health and Human Services recommends that schools require students, school employees and visitors wear masks indoors.
The majority of North Carolina school districts are requiring face masks. This includes the state’s four largest school districts: Wake County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford County and Winston-Salem/Forsyth.
DHHS doesn’t recommend that school districts consider making masks optional until local COVID transmission rates drop to moderate or low levels. Johnston County’s community COVID transmission rate still remains high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently, 56% of Johnston County residents are fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
School board lobbied on mask policy
The vote to end the mask mandate in Johnston County comes after months of debate. It’s especially heated because state lawmakers required monthly school board votes on masking policies.
In August, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn led a protest outside the school board meeting in Smithfield calling for the end of the mask mandate.
Speakers on both sides of the mask issue have shown up at meetings to lobby the school board.
The board had voted 4-3 on July 29 to end the mask mandate before deciding less than two weeks later to continue requiring face coverings before the new school year started.
Board member Lyn Andrews has been the swing vote to keep Johnston County’s mask requirement. She has cited how state health guidelines for quarantining students who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 are less strict in districts that require masks.
On Tuesday, Andrews proposed making masks optional in schools where the COVID-19 exclusion rate is below 4%. No district school is above 4%, but Andrews said that schools may go above that percentage once masks are no longer required.
Parents will be notified on Feb. 18 if their school is below 4% to be mask optional. The district’s COVID-19 dashboard (https://www.johnston.k12.nc.us/dashboard21) will provide a daily report on the exclusion rate at each school.
If a school goes above 4%, all students and school employees at the school will be required to wear a mask for 10 calendar days. At 5 p.m. on Day 10, the district will determine whether to continue the school’s mask requirement.
“We know that the numbers are going to go up,” Andrews said. “The 4% was selected because that will keep us from being any worse than we have been so far.”
Resume contact tracing
Johnston County had ended contact tracing due to requiring masks. But now it will have to resume the process of talking with students and school employees who’ve been potentially exposed to the virus after a person tests positive.
Andrews said that waiting to two weeks to end the mask mandate will give the district time to prepare for the change.
“It gives us the opportunity to put some things in place that we have to go back to because of the guidelines,” Andrews said.
If a teacher has a student who tests positive, the educator will need to provide a classroom seating chart. The district will talk with the student who tested positive to see if they were wearing a mask.
The district will also need to talk to people who are close contacts — within 6 ft. for 15 or more minutes a day — to see if they wore a mask, have received the vaccine and had the virus within the past 90 days.
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Johnston County ends school mask mandate. Here’s when masks will become optional.."
