Mount Airy City Schools is moving toward gradually going maskless in the school buildings in a policy adopted last week.
The North Carolina General Assembly has other ideas, however, adopting a law that would allow students to go maskless regardless of local regulations.
The city schools’ plan, approved by the Board of Education Tuesday, calls for the gradual roll-out of a mask-optional school system, based on continued monitoring and low COVID-19 infection rates.
Superintendent Dr. Kim Morrison said the first school slated to make masks optional is Jones Elementary School, on Feb. 28. She said the school is smaller, thus monitoring coronavirus cases and the effect of going maskless will be easier. Next on this list is Tharrington Primary School.
“If that date goes well, we should be able to move on pretty quickly with the other schools.”
“You can say mask optional, but the virus doesn’t change, it still jumps from person to person,” Morrison said. Thus, the school system will be relying heavily on rapid COVID tests to detect infections and control outbreaks.
“If you’re positive you go home, if you’ve been exposed you wear a mask,” she said of parts of the new policy.
Mount Airy City Schools have been at the forefront of a scientific approach in its response to the pandemic. The system has been working with the ABC Science Collaborative — a 12-state program that partners scientists and physicians with school and community leaders. The local school system is also part of a Duke University study on how to best keep kids in schools after exposure to the virus.
“People can’t believe I use a team of epidemiologists to help us make decisions,” she said. “Now, instead of just dropping the mask, we’re going to slowly introduce the changes and monitor the results.”
The school system’s approach has had clear benefits. Mount Airy is the only school system in North Carolina which has had in-school classes from August 2020 to now, and the system has avoided the widespread shutdowns many other systems experienced at the start of the current school year caused, at least in part, by lax mask policies.
“For 23 months, we have worn masks. Our cases have been among the lowest in the state, as well as our secondary transmission. We felt like that’s how we keep students in class,” she said. The tangible results have been evident in annual standardized testing, which has seen Mount Airy’s schools jump ahead of most of the state — by 20% or more in math testing — during the period when other schools were shutting down or doing remote learning only.
Surry County has been operating under a mask optional policy since the start of the school year, with individual schools going to masks required on an as-needed basis.
That policy relies on regular monitoring of COVID-19 case loads, with students testing positive required to stay home and those who have been exposed to be isolated, or quarantined, from other students and staff.
If an individual school sees more than 5% of its student and faculty population either positive or quarantined, masks become required until the percentage is below 5% for 10 consecutive calendar days.
That mask status is updated on the school system’s website daily. As of Friday, only Dobson Elementary School and Surry Early College were under a mask required status. While the Early College has a positive and quarantine rate far below 5%, students and faculty there must adhere to the mask policy at Surry Community College.
Gov. Roy Cooper this past week has asked school systems to find ways to safely move to mask-optional plans, but the measure approved by the General Assembly threatens to undermine both local policies as well as Cooper’s effort.
“This (omicron) variant is clearly more contagious, yet generally causes less severe illness, particularly to people who are vaccinated and boosted,” Cooper said in making his call for local schools and governments to move toward a mask-optional environment. “And now, people know how to gauge their level of risk and decide how to best protect themselves.”
The bill now goes to Cooper, who can sign it into law or veto it. While he did not say what he planned to do, Cooper did say he has “concerns that it’s unwise and irresponsible.”
If Cooper vetoes the measure, it goes back to the House and Senate, where each chamber would need a 60% vote to override the measure.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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