Confusion over mask mandate for California schools sparks tension between districts and parents.
Changing district rules lead to anger, confusion among many parents
Shifting rules around mask mandates at schools are confusing and angering parents who are focusing their frustration on local school districts.
Adding to the confusion: Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom decided to let local school districts decide how to deal with students who refuse to follow the state’s mask mandate. Now parents who don’t want their children to wear masks are showing up at school board meetings to demand their districts disregard the mandate.
“As the confusion increases, more parents are speaking out, and this is where the public pressure is going to mount on boards,” said Mike Walsh, president of the Butte County Office of Education and former president of the California School Boards Association.
Board meetings have become particularly challenging in rural areas that have low Covid-19 transmission rates and where schools were open most of last year.
“North state parents say they aren’t going to send their kids back to school if they have to wear masks,” said Richard DuVarney, Tehama County superintendent of schools. “They think the mental
health risks outweigh the risk of their children contracting COVID(-19).”
Some parents protesting masks at schools don’t see the state guidance as a mandate or don’t care if it is required. Some interpret the governor’s decision to let school districts decide how to enforce the mandate as license to make masks optional.
The state guidance this school year hasn’t changed much from the guidance last school year, said Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Association. Schools must enforce mask requirements or offer alternative educational options, he said.
The mask requirement doesn’t apply to children younger than age 2, students with medical or mental health conditions or who are hearing impaired or are communicating with a hearing-impaired person.
The state masking policy will test the relationship school districts have with their communities, Walsh said. “If the public has a good relationship, they will be more supportive,” he said. “It will be important that the public be heard.”
Parents have been further confused by the flurry of changes in state and federal mandates. Guidance issued earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially said only unvaccinated students and staffers would be required to wear masks. States have the discretion to impose additional protections as conditions warrant, according to the CDC.
The CDC changed course this week, saying even vaccinated people should wear masks indoors in areas with “substantial” or “high” transmission rates — 48 of the state’s 58 counties were in this range as of Thursday, according to CDC data. The state did likewise Wednesday.
Although the most vocal opposition to masking is happening in rural areas of the state, which tend to be more politically conservative, parents advocating against mask mandates also are showing up, in smaller numbers, at school board meetings in the Bay Area and other more liberal urban parts of the state.
On July 21, a large crowd of parents protested the mask mandate in front of the Clovis Unified School District headquarters in Fresno County. Thirty of the parents spoke before the school board. That same night in Santa Clara County, about a dozen parents spoke against enforcing mask use during a virtual board meeting of the county office of education.
“I wanted to say that myself and many, many other parents will not be putting our children in public school next year if they are required to wear a mask,” said Sarah Laws, a Santa Clara County parent. “I want you to know you will lose a huge population, and that’s a huge amount of money.”
Almost all parents at the meetings spoke of parental choice, with some parents claiming masks caused everything from carbon dioxide poisoning to staph infections and that it can weaken a person’s immune system, all of which have been disproved by doctors and scientists.
Contentious board meetings have been the status quo for the better part of 18 months, Flint said. “I don’t know if a lot of people necessarily sympathize with school boards, but quite often they are in the middle and that hasn’t been more true than during the pandemic,” he said.
Parents often disagree on what constitutes safety for their children, Flint said.
DuVarney says most people in Tehama County think masks should not be mandated.
“Essentially, what the public wants is for boards and superintendents to go against the CDPH guidelines,” he said, referring to the California Department of Public Health. “That puts a lot of pressure on the board. That is uncomfortable.”
Parent groups like Let them Breathe and Reopen California Schools, which both are protesting mask mandates, have templates for posters and announcements online to help parents organize anti-mask protests.
The two organizations took a more aggressive tactic last week, filing a lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against the governor, along with State Public Health Officer Dr. Tomás Aragón, state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly and Dr. Naomi Bardach, an adviser to the state on school pandemic safety.
The lawsuit alleges that the state’s masking requirement for all students regardless of vaccination status is not based on scientific research and can impede education.
But many California school boards and parents support the continued masking of students, particularly with the recent increase in COVID-19 cases tied to the more contagious delta variant. Most of the recent cases have affected unvaccinated people, which include children ages 11 and younger.
Many superintendents see masks as a way to keep infections down and schools open next fall, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, said Kindra Britt, spokeswoman for the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association.
“This is still a public health issue,” she said. “At the end of the day, we need to defer to public health officials. We want to open and stay open.”
Most districts plan to send children who refuse to wear a mask in classrooms to independent study or virtual programs, which have been ramped up to accommodate students who don’t want to return to classrooms during the pandemic.
But that won’t be easy in rural areas with spotty internet. And there are questions about whether the mask requirement and new regulations governing independent study are in conflict, California School Boards Association spokesman Flint said.
The new independent study law, part of the TK12 education trailer bill that details the fiscal 2022 state budget, says students in independent study who don’t make satisfactory academic progress or who are not engaging with instructors must be returned to inperson instruction.
Placing children who wear a mask and those who don’t into separate classrooms could be an option for school districts.
“It is an option, but we don’t want to do that,” Walsh said. “Every time we separate kids, that causes a problem.”