More NC school districts are dropping mask mandates. Answers to common questions.
Updated Thursday afternoon with changes to state health guidelines.
Some North Carolina school districts are now dropping face mask mandates for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago.
This week’s votes by the school boards in Cumberland and Johnston counties means that more than 90,000 students and teachers will soon have the option of not wearing a mask.
What does this potentially mean for the rest of the state’s public schools?
Here are answers to some of the common questions about face masks and COVID-19 rules in schools.
Can Gov. Roy Cooper eliminate school mask mandates statewide?
This week, the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey and Oregon said they would lift their statewide school mask mandates.
But North Carolina, unlike last school year, doesn’t have a statewide school mask requirement in place now.
Individual school districts and charter schools have the choice whether to require masks. The only exception is on school transportation such as school buses, where the federal government requires masking.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services revised the wording Thursday in its Strong Schools Toolkit to say masks should be required in areas where there’s high or substantial transmission of COVID-19. All 100 counties are in this category.
It’s a revision to earlier wording saying schools should only consider lifting mask mandates when there’s low or moderate COVID transmission in their area.
The toolkit has been adopted by the State Board of Education and is followed by most school districts.
Even though there’s no state mask mandate, some people blame Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper for schools masking students.
“DHHS guidelines have all but compelled local schools to keep their mask mandates in place,” House Speaker Tim Moore wrote in a letter Thursday to Cooper.
What do most schools do about masking?
Based on a database maintained by the N.C. School Boards Association and news reports, 79 of the state’s 115 school districts require face masks. This includes the state’s four largest districts: Wake County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford County and Winston-Salem/Forsyth.
The districts requiring masks make up 60% of the state’s 1.5 million public school students. The mask-optional districts account for 31% of the enrollment. The remaining 9% are mostly in charter schools, where it’s uncertain how many require masks.
State lawmakers are requiring school boards to hold monthly votes on their face mask policies. This had led to heated meetings across the state.
The number of districts requiring masks has fluctuated throughout the school year, rising during the delta and omicron waves of COVID-19 and falling when numbers drop.
Though DHHS doesn’t mandate masks, what does it require schools to do?
DHHS revised its guidance on Thursday to say schools don’t have to require students and school employees who’ve been exposed to COVID-19 to stay at home unless they’ve tested positive or have symptoms.
DHHS also said it’s no longer recommending that schools do contact tracing after someone tests positive. The Union County school board had voted last week to end contact tracing and quarantine requirements and urged other districts to follow their actions.
The changes come after complaints that the previous guidance kept too many students home who should be in class. Moore said in a news release Thursday that the old DHHS guidelines “force healthy kids to stay home and effectively mandate masks in schools.”
In his letter to Cooper, Moore urged the governor and DHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley “to end the policies that disrupt classrooms and hinder student achievement.” Moore said full in-person instruction means “seeing the full faces of teachers and classmates unmediated by a computer screen or mask.”
News researcher David Raynor contributed to this report.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 8:00 AM with the headline "More NC school districts are dropping mask mandates. Answers to common questions.."
