Schools feel the heat from Ducey’s order about masks

The school year may be nearly over, but the debate over masks is far from resolved.

Gov. Doug Ducey’s order last month rescinding the mask mandate for schools inflamed and confused the issue: Many parents incorrectly interpreted it as a “masks off ” directive.

But Ducey’s action merely tossed the decision to school administrators, putting them in the driver’s seat on mask policy. For many, it has been a hot seat.

“It’s been pretty wild,” said Deb

Dillon, president of the Prescott Unified School District board.

Prescott opted to make mask usage voluntary last month but reversed itself May 4 after six kids tested positive for COVID-19 and 180 classmates were sent home to quarantine.

Protesters stop meetings

The Prescott meeting was orderly, in contrast to earlier events in southern Arizona, where anti-mask protesters crowded into lobbies outside the board meetings of the Vail and Tanque Verde districts, demanding to speak. Both meetings were canceled.

The protesters at Vail, which is south of Tucson, held a mock election to appoint themselves school officials. That led to incorrect accounts that circulated nationwide that their complaints had scared the official board members into quitting.

The Arizona School Boards Association issued a statement condemning the Vail protest and other actions that threaten school board members.

“Too often this year they have been treated as faceless bureaucrats who are optimal targets to release rage and frustration over the circumstances of the pandemic,” the statement read.

Most urban school districts have opted to stick with mask requirements until the school year ends this month, recognizing there is no pleasing everyone.

But there is no universal consensus: In the Tempe Elementary School District, board member Monica Trejo heard from parents quoting Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who opposes mask mandates.

And in Mesa Public Schools, where officials are easing mask requirements but still “strongly recommending” their use, board member Kiana Maria Sears said most parents want some sort of middle ground.

The trick, she said, is flexibility seems to only move in one direction: toward easing requirements.

“It’s so much more difficult to reel things back in once you’ve put them out,” she said.

The debate Ducey reinvigorated is far from over: Many parents are looking ahead to the resumption of classes in late summer and seeking answers now about what their school will do.

COVID-19 weariness

The auditorium at Hendrix Auditorium at Mile High Middle School in Prescott buzzed with anticipation — as much as there can be a buzz in a socially distanced setting.

The topic was masks and, fittingly, mask usage varied. On the stage, nine of the 10 school officials wore masks as they listened to speaker after speaker weigh in on whether to return to face coverings.

COVID-19 weariness punctuated

Cindy Tobin’s comments.

“I’m tired, I’m really, really tired of all of this ... the politics, the divisiveness,” she said.

Her son is one of the 180 students quarantined at home because of recent COVID-19 exposure at school. It’s no way to finish out the school year, Tobin said; he wants to be at school.

Her informal poll of her son’s buddies found that if wearing a mask until school ends May 27 was what it would take for kids to be able to be in a classroom, they were OK with it.

“If they’re willing to do that, what is the problem?” she asked.

Hard to make friends

Parents who opted for online learning because they objected to the mask requirement said the two weeks since masks were optional made a world of difference.

Dawn DeSpain said her seventh grader’s excitement at going to school without a mask was on a par with going to Disneyland.

“We need to let our kids breathe,” she said.

She and others talked about the social isolation kids feel by not being on campus.

Kim Glaza said masks have made it hard for her two children, who are newcomers to the district, to make friends.

“We moved to Arizona to help preserve our freedoms as Americans,” she told board members. She urged them to look deeply at the effect of pandemic responses on children’s mental health.

How to protect kids?

Local medical professionals cited evidence that masks help prevent the spread of the virus. In fact, said Dr. Jennifer Waara, masks, hand-washing and social distancing are the only tools children under age 16 have to protect themselves.

On Monday, the federal Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 12 to 15.

“The pandemic is changing, and the children are becoming the leading edge of the resurgence of this disease,” she said, citing troubling statistics from Michigan.

Stan Goligoski executive director of the Yavapai County Education Service Agency, said he’s worn gas masks and bulletproof vests, despite their discomfort.

Parents routinely make their kids wear helmets when biking or stepping up to the plate at a baseball game; they slather on sunscreen and buy shin guards for their soccer players, he said.

“All of these items were developed for our protection,” Goligoski said. The same argument works for cloth face coverings: They protect, and they allow kids to stay in school, he said.

What led to Prescott’s vote

Before the discussion was finished, some in the audience sensed the pending decision and left.

School administrators were willing to try and operate without requiring masks, Superintendent Joe Howard told the audience.

But the number of COVID-19 cases went up and his staff warned him: Things could get ugly.

“We tried, and we saw some stuff that alarmed us,” he said of the days after masks became optional. “Is it alarming enough to put the masks back on and make it through the 17 days left in the school year?”

A 4-1 vote settled the question.

But left unanswered is what will happen in August, when the new school year starts.

Regret over Ducey’s move

The debate in Prescott echoes discussions, public and private, across Arizona schools.

As school officials grapple with how to plan for the upcoming school year, they regret that the current year is ending on sour note with a reenergized fight over masks.

“I personally wish Gov. Ducey hadn’t stepped into this,” said Dillon, the Prescott board president. “It’s been such a tumultuous year. It would have been nice to finish the year where everybody was semi-settled.”

Even in schools that quickly moved to make masks voluntary, there was some remorse over the governor’s action.

At Great Hearts Academies, a charter school chain, Arizona President Erik Twist received more pushback than anticipated when the schools dropped mask requirements, saying absent the governor’s order, they had no authority to tell parents what to do.

In a letter to parents, he said he wished the governor had waited until the school year was over to rescind his order.

“The lodging of this decision with the schools in mid-April necessarily introduced disruption, division and uncertainty, regardless of the policy adopted, and did so with little time left in the school year,” Twist wrote.

Great Hearts did not offer parents an online option to finish the school year.

One parent said she and others felt “blindsided” by the decision to drop masks, noting that it came with less than a day’s notice, whereas the mask mandate had plenty of lead time. She said she instructed her child’s teacher to be sure to keep the child socially distanced from anyone not wearing a mask.

The parent declined to give her name for fear of retribution at her workplace, then rued that the debate had become so acrimonious that she would feel that way.

“We tried (to not require masks), and we saw some stuff that alarmed us. Is it alarming enough to put the masks back on and make it through the 17 days left in the school year?” Joe Howard

Superintendent of the Prescott Unified School District

Next year: Masks on or off?

The future of masks is one of the biggest questions swirling around plans for the fall semester.

At the Prescott hearing, parents pressed for a game plan.

Darren Moll said he enrolled his children in an online charter school for the current school year because he objected to masks.

He wasn’t so concerned about what Prescott would do until the May 27 end of the school year. But what, he said, about next year?

School officials say they’re working on it, but they can’t make ironclad policies.

“Unfortunately, we can’t tell COVID what the plan is,” Dillon said. “We have no choice but to remain flexible.”

State health officials say the current guidance gives school officials flexibility.

“School districts and charter schools now can decide what is most appropriate for their communities,” Steve Elliott, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Services, said in an emailed statement.

“Looking ahead, we will continue to monitor and update public health recommendations as needed,” Elliott wrote.

At the state Department of Education, Superintendent Kathy Hoffman has formed a Ready for School task force that will work on how to reengage students and get them back into the classroom.

But plans are only as good as the conditions in place at a given time, said Trejo, the Tempe Elementary board member and the incoming president of the Arizona School Boards Association.

“You can make all the plans you want,” Trejo said, “but three months from now, will it be the same situation?”