Schools Superintendent David Moore has until April 27 to draft a long-awaited plan to phase out the mandatory facemask policy instituted this school year amid a spike in COVID-19 cases.
Barring an unforeseen spike in COVID-19 cases, facemasks are expected to be optional for students when the new school year starts on Aug. 10, said School Board Chairman Brian Barefoot.
“The goal is to eliminate them ASAP, certainly before summer school begins,” Barefoot said last Wednesday. “Nobody likes the idea of wearing masks.”
The school year ends May 28 and the school district’s summer programs start June 7. Moore’s plan will determine whether students will be required to wear facemasks during summer school.
“All of that could change tomorrow because there’s some new guidelines, there’s a surge or an outbreak, although the trends are certainly headed in the right direction,” Barefoot said. “I think we all hope we can have masks be optional, if not eliminated.”
The Florida Department of Health had administered at least one COVID-19 vaccinations to a total of 73,988 people in Indian River County as of Sunday, about 46 percent of the population.
The school district reported a total of seven COVID-19 cases involving five students and two staff members between April 12 and April 18. The seven cases represented the lowest number of COVID-19 cases since the early weeks of the school year.
In addition, the rate of increase in COVID-19-related deaths and hospitalizations in the county has slowed since mid-February, state Health Department records show.
The School Board voted unanimously last Tuesday to direct Moore to work with local, state and national health and medical experts to develop a plan to make face masks optional in the public schools.
A group of about a dozen parents has repeatedly called upon the School Board to make the facemasks optional this school year, arguing they impede the students’ breathing as well as intellectual and psychological growth. Several raised the same issues during the April 13 School Board meeting.
School Board Vice Chairwoman Teri Barenborg said she wants the face-mask phaseout plan to include criteria for local COVID-19 levels, vaccination rates and health safeguards in the schools that would allow facemasks to be optional.
Barenborg noted she originally called for Moore to present the facemask phaseout plan to the School Board in October, but COVID-19 surged in the county after that, and the process also was delayed by an unsuccessful lawsuit by four parents challenging the mandatory facemask policy.
“In October, that all got put on hold because of a lawsuit,” Barenborg said during the board’s April 13 business meeting. “So, we had to be very quiet.”
A state judge dismissed the case on Feb. 9, ruling the School Board had the unquestioned authority to require students to wear facemasks in school to reduce the spread of the virus.
Now would be a bad time to rescind the facemask requirement because crucial assessment tests are being conducted at schools across the district and a policy change could create a distraction, Barenborg said.
“I think that would really cause anarchy and chaos and I don’t want to do that,” Barenborg said. “What I do want to do is give parents a light at the end of this tunnel.”
“My concern is we need to have some sort of plan now for what’s going to happen this summer,” Barenborg said. “I also think we have to give parents the option of protecting their child the way they want to protect their child.”
