Fallout possible if districts refuse

When the holiday weekend ends and kids and teachers across Pennsylvania return to their classrooms Tuesday, they’ll do so with masks. At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Gov. Tom Wolf announced Tuesday that the state Department of Health was issuing an order mandating universal mask wearing in schools and early learning and child care centers.

That means that everyone who enters a school or child care center — students, teachers, administrators, staff, parents, visitors — has to wear a mask, regardless of whether they’ve received a COVID vaccine. And school districts are in charge of enforcing the rule.

Across the nation and state, including in Berks County, mandating students to wear masks has raised the ire of some parents. It has led to protests and shouting matches at school board meetings.

In some states, like Florida and Texas, state legislatures have forbade schools from instituting mask requirements.

In short, there are some parents who are quite adamant about their children not wearing masks. And there are some school districts who are on the same page or unwilling to battle those parents.

In Berks, despite recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that masks should be universally worn in schools, six districts started the school year without any mask requirement.

So what happens if, despite the new state order, a school refuses to make students and staff wear masks? What happens if a school district decides not to enforce the mandate?

The repercussions could be severe. According to information provided by the state Department of Education, failing to enforce the school mask mandate could lead to lawsuits, fines and, perhaps, even jail time.

The Department of Education has said that school officials who do not adhere to the mask order could lose the protection of sovereign immunity.

Sovereign immunity protects governmental agencies and bodies from being sued. That protection is granted to local districts by the state.

Losing it means administrators and school board members face the possibility of being sued by anyone who may be affected by the attempt to ignore the order. And those lawsuits would be directed at the officials personally, not the school district.

The department cites the state’s consolidated statutes, in particular the statute that deals with “willful misconduct.”

That statute says that an employee of a local agency like a school district would lose sovereign immunity if there is an injury caused by an act of the employee that constitutes “a crime, actual fraud, actual malice or willful misconduct.”

Fines, jail time?

Along with opening themselves up to lawsuits, school officials who refuse to enforce the state’s school mask mandate can also face fines.

The Department of Education said officials who fail to implement the mandate are subject to the penalty provisions of the Disease Prevention and Control Act of 1955.

Those provisions state that an individual who violates that act is subject to a fine of $25 to $300 per offense.

It is not made clear what constitutes an offense.

But if each student and staff member not required to wear a mask is considered a violation and each day they are not required to wear one counts as a separate offense, the total cost of fines could quickly climb well into the thousands and even millions.

If the fines are not paid, the offender can be sent to county jail for up to 30 days per offense.