Options Open
Amid a rise in concern about the delta variant of COVID-19, all public school districts in Butler County have made the wearing of masks and face coverings optional for students starting school this week.
Many districts have stipulated that their plans are flexible if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other authority requires masks at a stricter level, or if the state or national government implements a mask mandate.
Of the nine public school districts in Butler County, three — Butler Area, Allegheny-Clarion Valley and Seneca Valley — have made recommendations that students, staff and teachers wear masks, but are not officially requiring them at the moment.
At the private school level, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh announced Tuesday that masking would be required in all Catholic schools, which includes those in the county: St. Kilian Parish School, North Catholic High School, and Holy Sepulcher, St. Wendelin, St. Gregory and Butler Catholic schools.
“Although we had hoped to be in a position to allow optional masking, that is not possible at this point in time,” said Michelle Peduto, director of Catholic schools, in a letter to parents. “The protocols for quarantining in an optional-mask environment would significantly compromise our ability to provide in-person instruction. We must evaluate how the first month of classroom instruction impacts COVID numbers for students of all ages.”
At the moment, the CDC is actively recommending masking indoors in schools “for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors….regardless of vaccination status.”
“Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority,” the guidance released Aug. 5 reads. “Children should return to full-time in-person learning in the fall with layered prevention strategies in place.”
On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania State Education Association urged kindergarten through grade 12 schools to follow CDC guidance and require students and staff members to wear masks in school buildings.
“Masking up is essential to keeping in-person learning going all year. We know that safe in-person instruction is the best setting for students to learn,” Rich Askey, PSEA president, said in a news release. “For that reason, PSEA wants to see every school in the state start the school year in person, continue in person and finish in person. That will be impossible if schools have to close their doors because of a rapid spread of this virus.”
Butler Area School District's superintendent, Brian White, sent a letter Tuesday to district families, ensuring them that KN95 masks will be available for faculty and students who would like an additional level of protection.“Please know that I read every email and seriously consider each of your points of view,” White said in the letter. “While the viewpoints that are shared with me are often night and day, there is one consistent theme and that is a passion for the well-being of children.”White said in an interview that the issue is contentious, and a lack of hard guidance and requirements from the state is causing issues.“At the end of the day, superintendents are not public health officials,” he said. “I have no training in any of my graduate coursework in public health. We find ourselves with people acquiescing responsibilities in other leadership roles, and then there are 500 school districts facing conflicting legal advice. There's a lot of conflict because of that.”White said that a top-down mask mandate from the school district may not yet even be legally possible.“We followed CDC guidance to recommend that everyone should wear one,” White said. “Our solicitor issued a legal opinion that the school district does not have the authority to mandate masks. Anything beyond that is sort of moot when it comes to developing a mask policy if we don't have the legal authority.”Some other Pennsylvania school districts outside of Butler County, such as Pine-Richland School District and Fox Chapel School District in Allegheny County, have changed their school district health and safety plans to mandate masks.While Allegheny County has its own health department, unlike Butler County, that department has not issued a mandate for mask wearing in Allegheny. Both Allegheny and Butler counties are in the “high” COVID-19 community transmission category, according to the CDC.Tom King, of Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham, works as a solicitor with Butler Area, Slippery Rock Area, Moniteau, Karns City Area, South Butler County and Mars Area school districts.King said the Allegheny County school districts that have mandated masks may be receiving other advice from their own solicitors, but he believes that school districts do not have authority to mandate.“There is nothing in the school code that addresses ordering kids to wear masks, and local school boards do not have that power,” he said. “The rule is unless the legislature gives a school district specific authority to do something, it doesn't have that authority. It's not a case of 'Well, it doesn't say you can't.'”
Karns City superintendent Eric Ritzert said the community in his district is much like other communities: “There are people who are passionate on both sides.”The district also works with King as a solicitor and is maintaining the position that the district does not have the authority to mandate masks without an emergency order.“Right now, what I would say is that if the Pa. Department of Health felt that we should be wearing the masks, they should order it — just do it,” he said. “But I respect them giving the local school districts the authority to make the decisions.”He said he doesn't expect other schools that are mandating masks in other counties in the state will be sued, and that school solicitors don't always 100% agree on contentious topics.“Tom King and the firm have been our longtime solicitor for probably 30-plus years, and the school board does value their opinion,” he said. “There's layers to this decision, but currently that's been the legal advice from our firm. The board asks for continued updates on what are surrounding districts doing.“It's something we are going to continue to discuss with our peers, and if the state were to move to require masking, we would be forced to comply, and we would.”
Increasingly, school administrators are finding themselves in a position of balancing their residents' differing wishes and concerns for their children while a healthcare crisis continues to roil.Parents and community members have attended meetings at school districts across the county to voice their concerns about masking, required or not.At a Mars Area school board meeting Tuesday, tensions ran high and retorts broke out between parents as they gave public comment on the topic of mask mandates. Parents called masks everything from “child abuse” to “the only way we are going to keep our kids in school.”“We're not sitting around being ignorant that this is a hotbed issue. We eat, sleep and breathe it,” Mars superintendent Mark Gross said at the meeting. “To say we've struggled with it is an understatement. For every 'attaboy' I get, I'm getting a 'how dare you.'”Gross said that his district's decision to continue to have a mask-optional policy is motivated by what seem to be the same legal concerns Butler Area has — he is not confident that the district has the authority to mandate masks without a federal or state mandate or state of emergency declaration.“If we are provided an emergency order or mandate, this district is not stubborn, we will comply,” he said. “We will follow any and all mandates. But we do not have those (right now).”
Outside of Butler County, schools continue to fluctuate on masking. At a board meeting that ran late into the night Wednesday, North Allegheny School District's school board reversed the superintendent's decision to require masks in a 6-3 vote. The new policy “strongly recommends” the wearing of masks, but falls short of a mandate.For parents, the situation can feel overwhelming, and some are at a loss for guidance.Mars Area parent Barbara Mansfield has a daughter in seventh grade, and feels like “kids in these school districts are being left in a lurch.“After the school board meeting, I was a little bit disappointed in what was happening in our schools, and concerned about our kids,” she said. “I reached out to both the mayor's office and the Pa. Department of Health, and they both said that they are leaving it up to the schools.“The state's saying it's local; the school's saying they don't have the authority ... I feel like it leaves the kids with nothing.”
