Most KY schools wanted to make masks optional, even as COVID-19 surges. Here’s why.
In a cramped room with members of the Harlan County Public Schools Board of Education, Darla Heflin steadied herself behind a microphone.
“I’ll be very quick,” Heflin told the listening board and Superintendent Brent Roark on July 27. “We do believe that masks pose physical, mental and emotional distress on our students and on our children.”
Heflin explained that her son, a rising eighth-grader, asked to be picked up from school twice last year because wearing a mask plagued him with headaches, dizziness and nausea. “He’s not used to wearing them,” she said. “We don’t make him wear them outside of school. I’m here believing that you all will vote to make them optional. We do not want masks to be mandatory for our students.”
She then lobbed a veiled threat that many K-12 superintendents have become familiar with as districts across Kentucky weighed whether to require universal masking in the 2021-2022 school year: “I know a lot of parents agree with this: we do not want to take our children out of school,” Heflin said. “I represent, I think, more parents than I realize.”
The board members listened and asked no questions of Heflin once she finished. Superintendent Roark, who leads this Eastern Kentucky district of roughly 3,800 students, then detailed why he had toiled over the decision.
Last year, when Gov. Andy Beshear instituted a statewide mask mandate, “it was a fight the whole time to try and do it,” Roark admitted. This year, “Our plan includes a balance of parent and family choice, mitigation efforts and maximum social distancing with a focus on in-person instruction.”
He opted for a path chosen by nearly two-thirds of Kentucky’s other school districts: to give families the choice.
On Tuesday, Beshear overruled them, signing an emergency executive order mandating masks for students ages 2 and older, as well as faculty, staff and visitors in K-12, child care and pre-Kindergarten settings. Exceptions to the mandate include children with a disability that prevents them from wearing a face covering.
Last month, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that people resume wearing masks across the country in areas with dangerously high levels of transmission (all of Kentucky), Beshear and Kentucky Public Health Commissioner Steven Stack piggybacked on that guidance, calling on all K-12 districts to “require universal masking . . . regardless of vaccination status.”
Though Beshear did not initially mandate that ask, he threatened to if too few districts chose to independently follow his guidance. After less than 50 districts followed his advice, Beshear said the lack of masking in the majority of Kentucky’s districts endangered children re-entering classrooms, especially those under 12 ineligible for a vaccine.
“We are to the point where we cannot allow our kids to go into these buildings unprotected, unvaccinated and face this Delta variant,” he said Tuesday. “There is no other option. This is absolutely what we have to do.”
‘Not going to win’
Deliberations like the one in Harlan County, and the dilemma of balancing what some families want with what public health guidance unilaterally advises, took place across Kentucky this month as K-12 schools returned to the classroom amid the biggest surge of COVID-19 cases since vaccines first became available earlier this year.
Beshear this week praised the school districts that chose to mandate masks before he forced them to. Some made that decision, in part, because outbreaks and mass quarantines had already started to bloom. In Clay County Public Schools, which returned in person on August 5, 13 positive cases were diagnosed in the first three days, which led to 198 quarantined students and teachers. The board unanimously voted on Monday to revert from optional masking to mandatory.
Even though the science is sound, “Masking is an incredibly divisive topic,” Superintendent Roark said last week by phone. His county, like more than 90% of the state, is in the red again, which means the level of community spread is at peak severity. Transmission levels are considered “substantial” and “high” across the entire state, according to the CDC, which has called for universal masking indoors.
This point is tertiary for many Harlan County parents, Roark said. “If you mention [masking] at all, you’re going to have a large portion of people who are up in arms against it, who feel like it’s infringing on their personal rights.”
Roark doesn’t know exactly what percentage of his students and staff are vaccinated, and he won’t ask. When teachers first became eligible for doses earlier this year, he said half of his staff chose to get a shot.
A mask mandate, Roark estimated, would easily push 30% of his student body back to virtual learning.
“If I just come out tomorrow and say we’re going to require masks, I’ll have 1,200 to 1,500 easily that would go virtual on me, and I’ll never see them again this year,” he said. “And I physically hate to do that.”
On Friday, Roark said his district is “fully complying” with Beshear’s mandate. “No student or staff member will be allowed in any of our facilities without a mask,” he said, adding that he’s waiting to see whether a sizable swath of families bristle at the requirement and pull their kids out of in-person school as he predicted.
“We’re watching closely to see how much our home school numbers increase due to the executive order on masks, [but] that number will not be final until late next week,” Roark said.
‘They want individual choice to take priority’
Earlier this week, 65 miles away in Corbin, Kenley Bidwell was waiting to hear where his son’s school district would land on universal masking.
Bidwell and his pregnant wife had enrolled their 4-year-old son in the pre-Kindergarten program at Oak Grove Elementary School in the Whitley County Public School system. As proponents of vaccines and masking, the couple hoped their school district would follow the science and require universal masking, particularly because their son doesn’t yet have access to a vaccine. Only children ages 12 and older are so far eligible.
Marcy Rein, director of the Whitley County Public Health Department, was also watching from afar.
Rein, like many other public health directors across Kentucky, has made herself available throughout the pandemic as a consultant to local elected leaders who are tasked with making mitigation decisions for their communities.
On the topic of universal masking, however, she wasn’t consulted by Whitley County Public Schools. She sent relevant information to Superintendent John Siler from the CDC, including its guidance that K-12 districts practice universal masking, and reaffirmed that guidance with her own universal masking recommendation.
Rein received no response, but that didn’t surprise her. Neither did the decision the school board and Superintendent Siler made a few days later.
“At this time, with the full support of board members, I plan to open the Whitley County Schools on August 11, not requiring masks,” he posted to the district’s Facebook page on July 29, two days after Harlan County’s decision.
“This topic brings mixed emotions in our community,” Siler said. “But overwhelmingly parents and employees have shared their wishes that this be a decision for the parents and individual employees of the school district.”
Siler didn’t return a call from the Herald-Leader seeking comment. Just over 300 kids and teenagers ages 12 to 17 in the county are vaccinated. Among all Whitley County residents, 33% are vaccinated. On Tuesday, 16% of the county’s active cases were in school-age children, according to the health department.
Rein isn’t affronted that she wasn’t consulted by the district on their decision. She understands school boards have to weigh public health guidance with what their constituents are demanding, and “masks have enduringly been very unpopular here,” Rein said a few days later by phone.
“They’re in a terrible position: they’re trying to keep their schools safe, they’re trying to open for in-person classes [and] balance all the questions and concerns they get from parents,” she said. “They’re being responsive to what they’re hearing from their constituents, which is that they want individual choice to take priority.”
Bidwell was less patient after he heard the news. “With the way the school district is responding, we are not comfortable with him going to school,” he said by phone. He and his wife are now waiting to hear whether Williamsburg Independent Schools will require masks.
Under Siler’s post on Facebook, amid a sea of other parent comments, many praising the superintendent’s and the board’s decision, Bidwell rebuked them for caving to politics.
“The fact that the school district and [you] are ignoring the health and safety of our children as well as the common sense guidelines of scientists is the reason cases are rising,” Bidwell wrote. “My child is so excited to start school and will not be able to because of your poor leadership.”
‘At the edge of a precipice’
Like Rein, Cumberland Valley District Health Department Director Christie Green’s calls for universal masking in Clay, Jackson and Rockcastle counties went largely unheeded.
While Clay County schools independent reverted to requiring masks following mass quarantines, Jackson County and Rockcastle County public schools had decided to leave it as a choice, prior to Beshear’s emergency order. Like Rein, Green made her recommendation known to school administrators but wasn’t consulted by all her districts.
“I recognize that there are times when the facts I bring to the table don’t always fit with the current situation,” Green said last week by phone. “I don’t take this personally. But at this point in the pandemic, in a broader way, I’m very disheartened by seeing decisions made that could put individuals at risk or groups at risk based on information that is not as sound.”
Clay County schools reconvened last week, Jackson County students return this week, and Rockcastle County resumes in two weeks. All three counties are in the red.
“It’s just really disheartening to know that we are potentially looking at a significant uptick in cases as school reconvenes,” Green said. “Coming together in large groups indoors without masks is pretty much a guaranteed spreading of [COVID-19]. Knowing that our staff are still recovering from previous surges, we feel as if we’re at the edge of a precipice.”
Herald-Leader writer Valarie Honeycutt Spears contributed reporting.
This story was originally published August 10, 2021 at 12:48 PM.
