Majority of NC students will still have to wear masks — but not in many rural areas
The majority of North Carolina’s public school students will be required to wear face masks when they return to class this month. But many children in smaller, rural counties will be unmasked.
In the absence of a statewide school mask mandate, North Carolina’s 115 school districts have been debating whether to require face coverings again. As of Aug. 11, 59 school districts representing 59% of the state’s 1.5 million public school students are mandating mask usage in schools.
The mandatory mask districts include most of the state’s large urban areas, such as Wake County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Guilford, Forsyth and Cumberland counties.
“Masks have shown to cut down on transmission,” Johnston County school board member Kay Carroll said Tuesday before the district voted to reverse its decision to make masks optional. “There’s no question about that. That’s data, that’s science. Anything else is just taking a stance.”
Masks optional for 30% of NC students
Another 52 districts representing 30% of the state’s students are not requiring masks. Most of these districts are in smaller and/or rural counties. Many have low COVID-19 vaccination rates, too
Onslow County school board chairman Bob Williams told the audience at this week’s board meeting they don’t want to impose “mandates that would affect your children in a negative manner.” He said requiring masks last school year led to “sociological issues” for some students.
“We did a survey,” Williams continued. “The survey was between 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 to let parents make the decision or let staff make the decision. We are still a democracy.”
Onslow County is one of the largest districts in the state that’s making masks optional. It has more than 25,000 students.
Four school districts have not yet decided on masking policies for the 2021-22 school year. It’s not clear how many of the state’s 200 charter schools, which account for around 9% of the public school students, are requiring masks.
All schools still have to require masks be worn in buses due to requirements from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Groups recommend requiring masks
Last school year, the state required face masks to be worn in schools. This year, the state is still recommending required masking but has left the decision up to individual districts and charter schools.
Districts that have required masks point to recommendations from groups such as the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the ABC Science Collaborative formed by Duke University.
“According to the ABC Science Collaborative, masking is the most effective mitigation strategy to prevent COVID-19 infection and transmission,” Mary Ann Wolf, president of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, said in a statement.
“As we wait for an effective vaccine to be available to all of North Carolina’s students, we believe it is imperative that schools continue to require school staff and students to wear masks to ensure everyone can safely resume in-person learning activities for this school year.
Williams, the Onslow school board chairman, argued that “for every expert that you bring to me, I’ll bring another that has a counterpoint” on COVID. He said the “science isn’t out.”
Collective good or personal choice?
The decisions are being made at a time when North Carolina is seeing a surge in new COVID-19 cases, including nearly 5,000 new cases on Wednesday. Children under the age of 12 aren’t yet able to be vaccinated.
Cumberland County school board chairwoman Alicia Chisolm said they “have to look at the better good for the total community” by requiring masking.
“We have to not only look at keeping ourselves safe, we’ve got to work together to keep each other safe also,” Chisholm said.
But critics of mask mandates argue that it’s a decision best left to individual parents and school employees.
“Personal responsibility is an important part of civic responsibility,” said Williams. “If we have the government dictating to us every facet of what we should or should not be doing, we take that responsibility and every day that we lose that we will never get it back.”
At this week’s Rockingham County school board meeting, the board rejected adding wording saying that face masks are recommended even if they’re no longer required.
Political divide over masking
All but one of the 52 districts that aren’t requiring masks is in a “red” county that voted for Donald Trump in last fall’s presidential election.
Roanoke Rapids in Halifax County is the only mask-optional school district that is in a “blue” county that voted for Joe Biden. The other two school districts in that county, Halifax County and Weldon City, are both requiring masks.
It’s more evenly distributed in the districts that are requiring masks with 32 in counties that voted for Trump and 27 that voted for Biden.
“Although the divide between those requiring masking and those who are not is interesting and may be indicative of some larger political and ideological divide, this is something Gov. (Roy) Cooper allowed districts to decide for themselves,” Terry Stoops, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center For Effective Education, said in an interview.
Vaccine rates low in mask-optional districts
Of the 52 school districts in 49 counties that have voted for optional masking:
▪ Only 10 of the 49 counties are at or above the 50% mark for fully vaccinated people age 12 and up.
▪ Nine mask-optional counties have vaccination rates below 40%.
▪ The mask-optional counties with the lowest vaccination rates — Harnett and Rutherford — are at 36%. North Carolina has a vaccination rate of 55% for people ages 12 and up.
Wolf of the Public School Forum says she hopes all school districts will require masks, particularly the rural areas where vaccination rates continue to be low and COVID-19 community transmission rates are high.
“We know that rural districts in particular often struggle to equitably serve students due to fewer resources and a weak broadband internet infrastructure — ensuring students can participate in in-person learning by mitigating the spread of COVID-19 is critical to ensuring all students have equitable access to a sound basic education,” Wolf said.
Schools switch to requiring masks
Over the past week, eight school districts have reversed their decision to not require masking. Those school districts — Henderson, Johnston, Madison, Moore, Swain and Watauga counties, Mooresville and Kannapolis — cited rising COVID-19 cases, higher test positivity rates and school COVID clusters that have led to students being quarantined.
The state Department of Health and Human Services has tried to encourage universal school masking by recently changing guidelines around quarantining. DHHS says students who were within six feet of a classmate who tested positive but who wore a mask would would not have to quarantine.
Several Johnston County school board members cited the new state quarantine guidelines for now requiring masks. Unlike last year, school districts aren’t required to provide virtual instruction, so quarantined students can spend two weeks at home without daily instruction.
“I hurt for the kids who have to wear these masks all day long,” said Johnston County school board member Lyn Andrews. “I don’t want that for them. But I know this: They’re not going to learn if they’re not in school.”
School districts may change their masking policies over the school year as COVID conditions change. But in the meantime, Stoops of the Locke Foundation said the split creates an opportunity where things such as the impact of masking on enrollment and possibly academic achievement can be studied.
“This is a researcher’s dream,” Stoops said. “We’re creating a natural experiment that will allow us to test any of a number of hypotheses.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 4:56 PM with the headline "Majority of NC students will still have to wear masks — but not in many rural areas."
