Wake schools will make face masks optional. But it’s not coming soon enough for some.
Updated with Gov. Roy Cooper vetoing the school mask bill on Feb. 24 and Wake announcing that masks will be optional on buses starting March 7.
Wake County students and teachers will not have to wear face masks in school starting March 7 — and possibly sooner if a new state law goes into effect before then.
The Wake County school board voted 7-1 on Tuesday for a timeline that makes masking optional:
▪ immediately for all athletic events.
▪ After 5 p.m. Friday for all other extracurricular activities.
▪ March 7 for all other school activities.
The board rejected efforts by board members Karen Carter and Roxie Cash to end the mask mandate on Feb. 28 or March 1. The board majority said waiting until March 7 will give families and employees time to prepare for the transition.
“For some families, this isn’t coming soon enough,” school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview after the vote. “For some families this is coming too fast, and so I think we heard very clearly that there is a need for respecting the individual decisions that folks are making for their students and for their families and for themselves.”
School leaders cited Tuesday how North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and the state Department of Health and Human Services are recommending that schools end their face mask mandates. Face masks will become optional — but still recommended in Wake — for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic struck schools in March 2020.
With the change, Wake County joins dozens of school districts statewide that have decided this month to end their long-running mask mandates. Wake is the state’s largest district, with 159,000 students and 20,000 employees.
Masks will also be optional on school buses starting March 7. Wake announced the bus change after the CDC ended the mask mandate for school transportation.
Change too soon or too slow?
Board member Jim Martin, who opposed the change, argued that it was being made for political reasons and not health reasons. He said a fifth COVID wave is coming that will affect the district’s vulnerable students and school employees.
“Anybody who looks at a pandemic and makes a decision based on dates and not metrics is not making a data-based decision, is not making a health-based decision,” Martin said. “It’s making a political-based decision.”
Martin’s concern was echoed by the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators.
“Public school staff want to celebrate the moment when conditions in our communities have become safe enough to end mask requirements,” Kristin Beller, president of Wake NCAE, said in a statement Wednesday.
“With child vaccination rates lower than we had hoped and cases higher than we had hoped, the end of a mask requirement leaves many public school staff with questions about how to offer added layers of protection for students and staff with compromised immune systems and our Pre-K students until vaccination and transmission conditions change..”
But the change isn’t coming soon enough for some parents. Around 60 people rallied outside the school board’s headquarters in Cary on Tuesday to say that masks should become optional now.
Tracy Taylor of OpenNC said at the rally that the group is organizing a statewide protest Friday encouraging students to not wear masks in schools. She spoke in front of a crowd carrying signs such as “Child Abusers Meeting Going On Now! WCPSS,” “Education Over Suffocation” and “Free My Smile Today.”
“It is time for civil disobedience,” Taylor said to cheers from the crowd. “We are done.”
A similar rally was held at last week’s Wake school board meeting to call for an end to the mask mandate.
Schools lifting mask mandates
Wake has been slower than some districts in easing back on COVID-19 restrictions that have been in place since Cooper initially ordered all schools closed for in-person classes in March 2020.
The first Wake students began returning for limited in-person classes in October 2020. It wasn’t until April 2021 that Wake offered daily in-person classes to every student not enrolled in the Virtual Academy program that was created during the pandemic.
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On Feb. 1, the school board unanimously voted to continue the face mask requirement. Some critics charged there was a conspiracy to continue masking indefinitely because administrators had unsuccessfully recommended that the board expand the mask mandate to children as young as age 2.
But in the past three weeks, multiple governors have announced plans to end their statewide school mask mandates. North Carolina doesn’t have a statewide school mask mandate this year, but DHHS has gone this month from recommending that schools require masks to now saying they should become optional.
Health officials cited how the COVID-19 vaccine is widely available now and the number of new cases is going down. School Superintendent Cathy Moore said county health officials support the district moving to mask optional.
In addition, legislation passed last week would let families to opt out of school mask requirements. Cooper announced on Thursday that he’s vetoing the bill, which if it had gone into law would have allowed students to opt out of masks on Feb. 28.
House Speaker Tim Moore said Friday that they will attempt to override the veto.
Now, at least 97 of the state’s 115 school districts are mask optional. That’s a change from Jan. 28, when the N.C. School Boards Association said 89 districts were requiring masks amid the height of the omicron variant.
“These changes will be sudden for some, long overdue for others but they are supported by state and local authorities,” said board vice chairman Chris Heagarty, who made the motion to end the mask mandate.
Masks, vaccine recommended
Wake is still recommending that masks be worn as well as encouraging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Those who would like to continue wearing a face covering are encouraged to do so,” Wake said in a message Tuesday to families after the vote. “While the number of COVID-19 cases has dropped rapidly, health officials say face coverings and vaccinations are an effective way to further reduce the likelihood of becoming infected.
School board member Christine Kushner said that students and school employees who continue to wear masks should not be bullied by others at school. She charged that adults have been screaming at children who wear masks.
“Masks will continue to protect the students that wear them, the staff that wear them,” Kushner said. “Our school communities need to recognize that many of our students and staff will continue to wear masks and that they’re doing it for their own reasons. They shouldn’t have to declare why they’re doing it and people should respect all choices.”
Beller of Wake NCAE also urged that people not be bullied if they still wear a mask.
“We will need ongoing cooperation and collaboration from family members in modeling and reinforcing acceptance for families whose choices regarding virus prevention may differ from their own,” Beller said. “As members of a school community, students learning to care for others extends far beyond following a recommendation to wear a mask.”
At the same time, Moore said that the message communicated to principals is that it’s a parental choice now whether to mask. She said schools are not to impose additional masking requirements.
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 5:27 PM with the headline "Wake schools will make face masks optional. But it’s not coming soon enough for some.."
