CMS board votes to require masks for students, staff when classes resume next month

Amid a group of about 35 community members — many waving signs against a face-covering mandate — the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted Friday morning to require face masks indoors at schools this fall.

With the 8-1 vote, CMS became one of the few local school districts to require face masks for all students and staff when classes start up next month. Board member Sean Strain was the lone dissenter.

“I want our students and staff to be safe in our schools,” said board member Carol Sawyer, who also encouraged residents to get vaccinated. “We have tools to protect them.”

Superintendent Earnest Winston recommended extending mask requirements in a memo to board members Thursday, a copy of which was sent to teachers.

His recommendation follows updated federal and state guidelines that urge school districts to continue requiring masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, especially among unvaccinated people.

Winston, in the three-page memo, cited the rise in COVID-19 Delta variant cases and the inability to vaccinate children under 12 in his recommendation that CMS implement “universal face covering requirements for all students, staff, volunteers, and visitors inside CMS facilities for the 2021-2022 school year.”

On Wednesday, county Health Director Gibbie Harris said she’d recommended to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools that mask wearing continue to help prevent outbreaks and subsequent disruptions to classrooms.

The board decision extends to the entire school year. However, Winston will review the situation at the end of each academic quarter, or sooner if indicated by local metrics and evolving guidance.

“I hate wearing this mask, but I do it because I care about others, and I’m not selfish,” board member Dr. Ruby Jones said.

Masks will be required inside all CMS facilities and buses. But the decision leaves some parents unhappy.

“We should be able to make the choice,” Brooke Weis, who has two children in CMS, said Friday morning. “We are not co-parenting with the government. We don’t want muzzles on our children. I think their minds are made up, but it’s still important for us to come out and show Mecklenburg we oppose what they are doing.”

‘We must protect our children’

Tovi Martin, parent of a middle school student in CMS, is passionate about the district following various health recommendations. So much so, she emailed board members ahead of Friday’s vote to urge that they approve a mask mandate.

“Now, we are also seeing that even fully-vaccinated individuals are contracting and spreading the latest, most contagious variant of COVID,” Martin told the Observer. “That means that even vaccinated kids and staff might contract and spread the disease to those who are unable to take the vaccine. The science is also showing that this variant is affecting kids more than previous variants.

“I dislike wearing a mask as much as anybody else. They aren’t awesome.... But given the risk right now, given the new developments around the Delta variant, and understanding the inherent nature of schools mixing vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, they are essential.”

Mecklenburg County data and recent guidelines from Mecklenburg County Public Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC can’t be ignored, Martin said.

Board members agreed Friday.

“We must do this to protect our children,” board member Lenora Sanders Shipp said. “It’s important that we all stay masked.”

Chairperson Elyse Dashew said more than 70 doctors had reached out to her, encouraging her to require masks. And Thelma Byers-Bailey, the school board’s vice-chairperson, said wearing a mask helps protect others.

“I had COVID — it took me down,” Byers-Bailey said. “I still haven’t totally recovered. I took the vaccine.... I hate the masks. I enjoyed not wearing them, but I’m going to wear them again.”

According to the approved motion, individuals must wear face coverings unless “the individual meets an exception as set forth in the Centers for Disease Control or North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services’ guidelines.” Those exceptions include any person “who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious or incapacitated, or is otherwise unable to put on or remove the face covering without assistance,” according to the NCDHHS.

“I’m in support of kids wearing masks,” said Dawne Cornelius, a tutor and former substitute teacher for CMS. “I’ve worked with a student who was not old enough to be vaccinated who got sick, and the whole family got infected. A parent is on life support with COVID right now and they don’t know if she’s going to make it. The student is still experiencing long term effects.”

‘What problem are we trying to solve?’

Several parents who attended Friday’s meeting held signs — one read “Lies” and another “my child, my choice. No masks!” — and occasionally yelled out. Most are against any kind of mask mandate.

“We are one of 14 states that kept masks on all of last year,” Weis, the CMS parent, said. “We might as well be in New York or California, that’s how bad North Carolina is.”

Strain opposed the mask requirement and asked: “What problem are we trying to solve?”

He said that he believes COVID is real and that vaccines and masks work, but said he does not believe masking children is necessary.

“If vaccines work, then I believe we are at much lower risk for illness and death. So, from that perspective, I’m back to a risk assessment question: What is the risk to kids who have not been eligible? And as I look at those numbers, those numbers are negligible,” Strain said.

CMS joins Anson County Schools, in the Charlotte area, in requiring all students in grades K-12 and staff to wear masks while on campus. In Durham, masks also are required. Wake County Schools, the state’s largest district, requires masks for all staff and students. The topic is up for discussion at Wake County’s school board meeting next week.

A slew of other districts, including Mooresville and Caldwell, Gaston, Watauga and Union counties, have made masks optional. In Cabarrus County, masks are optional but mandatory for all bus riders.