North Carolina School Board Meetings Have Become the New COVID Battleground
Parents gather outside a Johnston County school board meeting to make their voices heard on the potential mask mandate. Source: Charles Duncan
Beginning this school year, mandated by a new state law, North Carolina public school boards must hold a vote on a mask mandate policy at least once a month. This bill seeks to allow “parents, teachers, everyone else to really have transparency,” said house speaker Tim Moore. Amy Churchill, president of the North Carolina School Boards Association, agreed with this sentiment. Yet she questioned the once-a-month standard, as it makes the process “unnecessarily political” and "it makes it to where the school board can only really focus on mask mandates” — not the other vital tasks the board usually addresses.
School boards serve an essential role in communities: they allow the citizenry to control and provide input regarding the management of their public schools. Generally, each school board is composed of residents elected from the community. These elected citizens are tasked with, among other duties, creating a school budget, appointing a superintendent, and deciding the best routes for students to most effectively learn and become successful outside of school. School boards are also required to hold public meetings in which citizens from the community may express their opinions concerning potential school-related policies.
These school board meetings are the setting for the monthly mask mandate debates, and they have gotten quite heated. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper recently had to admonish the new increase in “threats, bullying, intimidation” at these meetings, reminding the parents that “our children are watching.” While threats certainly should not be part of the discourse, these debates are important as they test ideas, scrutinizing them to show their values and defects, as well as giving them the unequivocal power that consent from the public gives.
Speaking in favor of an optional mask policy, one parent at a Union County school board meeting commended the board for making masks optional as they recognized that “parents ultimately are the resident experts when it comes to our children.” Moreover, another parent cited how “kids don’t face any real danger from this virus.” Recent American Academy of Pediatrics data seems to support this claim. Although children account for 25.7% of new cases, this number has risen by 10.7% since the beginning of the pandemic, likely because no vaccine has been approved for children under 12 yet. Furthermore, 0.1%-2.0% of child COVID-19 cases result in hospitalizations, and 0.00%-0.03% of cases result in death. Yet, it is crucial to note that children can be carriers, bringing the coronavirus home to higher-risk family members, and that long-term health effects are unknown.
Parents on the other side of the debate have also been quite vocal, and their goal is simple, as stated by one parent: “to keep my kids safe” and “keep everybody in our community safe.” Wake County school board member Monika Johnson-Hostler also noted her desire to keep “in-person learning and decreasing the time that these students are quarantined,” which she says will be accomplished “if we make the decision to mandate masks.” Furthermore, recognizing the overwhelming support they have from medical establishments, one parent asked, “how many people need to be sick for you to follow the guidance of every medical organization in the world?” As of right now, the CDC recommends that all K-12 schools require masks, regardless of vaccination status. A report from Duke Health also found that “proper masking is the most effective mitigation strategy to prevent COVID-19 transmission in schools.”
As of September 13th, “111 of the state’s 115 school districts are requiring” masks. Districts, like Union County “without mask wearing requirements are seeing substantially more spread of the virus and hours of lost learning among students.” For the time being, it appears as though the future of most North Carolinian school children will include masking up, as 55% of parents support a mask mandate. However, with the prolonged reliance on masks, some parents are right to question when it will end. Masks serve as an ever-present reminder of the pandemic and the fear it engenders, and viruses surely will not disappear after the pandemic ends. The monthly debates, although contentious, allow each side to ensure that their voices are heard on this highly controversial issue. It also allows the current policy to be continually tested to show its strengths and weaknesses, allowing the board members and parents to weigh each side.