Education Week - May 12, 2021 - 10

Masks or No Masks: School Leaders Say
They Can't Make Anyone Happy
Several states, including Alabama,
Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas, have
rolled back their masking requirements, putting superintendents and
school boards once again on the hot
seat on a question that, at least politically, feels un-winnable: Should they
hold fast to their own masking protocols in schools?
With states abdicating their role in
masking, districts are bearing the full
brunt of opinions from resentful parents and fearful teachers. The availability of vaccines for adults and falling rates of the virus have added to the
pressure. While public health officials
continue to recommend masking, it's
far less clear at what point it will be safe
to let guards down more generally.
Masking has long morphed from
a purely health issue into a political
quandary-the topic of cable-news
programs and raucous board debates.
The drama has resulted in angry parent rallies, interrupted school board
sessions, and, in Kansas, formal hearings at which parents have sought to
overturn local masking rules.
The latest fallout comes from Arizona, where Gov. Doug Ducey on April
19 rescinded an executive order from
last year requiring all K-12 schools to
require masks for anyone above the
age of five.
The announcement came with little
warning just a month before the end
of the school year, leaving district
leaders scrambling to decide whether
to maintain, roll back, add, or alter
their own directives.
" Arizona is a very ideologically diverse place, and there will be some
rural districts in more conservative
areas of the state that are like, it's not
worth it to keep masking policies.
They're so tired of fighting about
this, " noted Chris Kotterman, the director of government relations for the
Arizona School Boards Association.
" The use of a mask here among people of a certain ideological stripe has
come to signify more than infection
control; it's a political thing. "
District leaders in several other
states have already found out the
hard way that, as with school reopening plans, there is no answer that will
please everyone. Some have kept their
own mandates; others loosened up
some of the details for outdoor activities and recess. Still others are simply
allowing students and staff to decide
on their own whether to mask up.
In the Bentonville, Ark., district,
which voted to maintain masking
requirements for staff and students
through the end of the school year, the
critique cut both ways, expressed in
more than 700 e-mails from parents
to school board members: from those
who wanted masks dropped immediately, and those who want masking
extended indefinitely.
" It's one of those times as a school

Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP

By Stephen Sawchuk

Second grader Ernesto Beltran
Pastrana puts on his face

Which States Have Loosened Up
Masking Requirements in Schools?
A growing number of states have lifted statewide masking
requirements, effectively pushing down the decision about
whether or not to require masking to local school districts.
Here's a rundown of some of the recent action:

* Alabama: Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, allowed the state's mask
mandate to expire April 9, leaving it up to school districts to
determine whether to continue them on their own or not.

* Arizona: On April 19, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, withdrew
a previous executive order requiring masks or face coverings for
anyone over the age of ﬁve in schools.

* Arkansas: On March 31, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, lifted
the statewide mask mandate, and on April 29 he signed legislation
barring any government entity from requiring face shields.

* Kansas: A new law signed March 24 by Gov. Laura Kelly, a
Democrat, made school districts the only authorities permitted to
set school operational plans during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also
allows parents, students, and staff to challenge those plans in a
formal hearing before the school board. The legislature overruled
Kelly's subsequent executive order requiring statewide masking.

* Texas: An executive order by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, that took

mask while attending class
during the first day of partial
in-person instruction at
Garfield Elementary School in
Oakland, Calif., in March.

There's clear
science on the
side of masking;
it just doesn't
make sense for
that to be such
a localized
decision.

effect March 10 lifted a statewide mask mandate. The Texas Education

SARA DAHILL-BROWN

Agency later clariﬁed that school boards may choose whether or not to

Associate professor

adhere to the agency's masking guidelines.

of political science,

Other states, including Indiana, Mississippi, and Florida, have eased
up some COVID-19 requirements but for now still require masking in
K-12 settings. (About 15 states never issued a mask mandate, so those
decisions have long fallen to local businesses, governments, and schools.)

board member where you don't make
anyone happy, " said Eric White, the
president of the school board. " Nobody said, 'Great job, board!' "
School masking becomes political,
illuminating the challenges of
local control

Nearly all health experts agree that,
along with hand-washing, masking is

10 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 12, 2021 | www.edweek.org

one of the cheapest and most effective
mitigation strategies to prevent transmission of the virus.
But the rollout of effective vaccines
has intensified calls to revise masking
mandates in an increasing number of
conservative states, even as the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention continues to recommend
the use of masks or face shields in
K-12 settings. (The agency has, how-

Wake Forest University

ever, loosened up other recommendations related to social distancing in
schools.) Some of the most recent
oubreaks, in fact, are occurring
among school-aged children.
Late last month, the CDC said that
vaccinated adults could forgo masks
in outside settings, but it did not specifically OK that for school contexts.
No vaccine has yet been approved for
children younger than 16, as of publication time.
For Republican governors especially, enforcing a statewide mask
mandate at the height of the pandemic put them in a potentially shaky
position with core constituents. Falling rates of COVID-19 transmission
in many states have added to the
pressure on them to retrench. In
doing so, many have expounded on
the theme of personal responsibility.
" I will continue to wear my
mask when I'm around others and
strongly encourage my fellow citizens to use good common sense
and also practice personal responsibility, " Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey
said when she declined to extend
the state's masking mandate, which
ended April 9.
In effect, the accelerating rollback
of statewide masking mandates
hasn't made the topic any less political or controversial; it's merely
passed the buck down to local districts and municipalities to deal with.
The unsurprising fallout can be seen
in loud, angry commentary flooding
districts' Twitter threads and Facebook pages as they've announced
their new policies, and in emotionally fraught board meetings.
" I want to know from each of you:
When does the fear of physical illness outweigh the actual mental or
physical illness or lack of connection
in our kids? " one parent in Higley,
Ariz., recently demanded of board
members, tearfully describing how
her kindergartener had yet to see
her teacher's face.
Even those parents who don't hold
dyed-in-the-wool opinions about
masking are likely to be confused
by all the shifting requirements,
said Sara Dahill-Brown, an associate professor of political science at
Wake Forest University, who studies
the way the federal, state, and local
levels of school governance interact
and sometimes conflict.
" The way schools are governed, and
power over them is shared, means
it's already difficult to identify who's
responsible for what, or where a particular policy comes from. All these
conflicting narratives and guidelines
and changing rules takes a problem
that was already present and just kind
of puts it on steroids, " she said.
Plus, she said, local governance
makes sense when it's about match
and fit and tailoring to your community, but tends to work less well when
it comes to issues of resources or mak-

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Education Week - May 12, 2021

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