Students at this NC school district must wear masks after the holiday break. Here’s why.
A large school system near Charlotte has mandated mask-wearing again after hundreds of students were reported isolated with COVID-19 symptoms over the past week.
The Iredell-Statesville school board voted this week to reimpose mask wearing when students return from the holiday break on Jan. 5. Students are in class until Dec. 22.
Only students with a mask waiver on file at their school will be exempt, the board voted Monday.
“The mask mandate is a result of large numbers of students having to be excluded from school as a result of close contact” with someone with COVID, according to a news release Tuesday by Boen Nutting, Iredell-Statesville Schools’ chief of strategic planning and student services.
The school system’s latest COVID-19 dashboard numbers show 343 students were isolated with COVID symptoms as of last Friday.
And 570 students were excluded from school last week due to close contact with someone with COVID in their school, the dashboard shows. That represents 2.78% of the district’s overall student population.
Another 167 students were excluded from school due to close contact with someone in the community who contracted the disease, according to the dashboard.
Union Grove Elementary in the rural northern end of Iredell County moved to virtual learning this week after 50% of students and staff members had COVID-19 or were exposed to it, WSOC-TV reported.
With more than 20,000 students, Iredell-Statesville Schools north of Charlotte ranks among the 20 largest school systems in North Carolina.
Only 10 staff members were excluded from school last week due to close contact with someone with COVID in their school, and four from close contact with someone in the community, the dashboard show.
In September, the school system saw an even larger uptick in students isolated with COVID-19 symptoms, when nearly 1,000, or 5% of the student population, were quarantined in a given week, officials said.
Like other school systems across the region, state and country, Iredell-Statesville has seen protests from both sides of the mask issue.
A glass door was broken during an Iredell-Statesville school board meeting earlier in the fall as people outside protested the system’s mask mandate at the meeting, the (Statesville) Record and Landmark reported at the time.
This story was originally published December 14, 2021 at 5:56 PM.