As the fight over school mask policies becomes contentious again, the Jefferson County school board refused to make masks optional Tuesday night.
At least three school board members said they would vote in favor of rolling back the district’s mask requirement during Tuesday’s school board meeting.
The masking was not on the board’s agenda, but board members can make motions to take votes mid-meeting. Four of the seven board members must support a motion to vote on the agenda and adopt a policy.
School board member James Craig did a motion to add a discussion on incentive masks while the county is in the red, instead of asking for them, on Tuesday’s agenda.
It failed by a vote of 3-4. Craig, Linda Duncan and Sarah McIntosh – all who planned to vote in favor of a new policy – voted yes. Board Chair Diane Porter, Vice Chair Corrie Shull and members Chris Kolb and Joe Marshall voted against the motion, stopping a discussion and eventual vote on changing the mask policy.
The decision came less than an hour after Attorney General Daniel Cameron shared a letter he wrote to district leaders urging them to end the mask mandate. Cameron, a Republican running for governor, said his office is investigating whether JCPS is allowed to institute such a mask policy.
Last year, state lawmakers decided that local school districts would be allowed to enforce their own mask policies. That rule was not changed during the 2022 legislative session earlier this year.
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Under current district policy, masks are required on Jefferson County Public Schools property whenever the district is at the highest or community red level of the spread of COVID-19.
The policy follows state and federal health guidelines, but recent national data shows JCPS is one of a handful of districts following that guidance.
Duncan recently said she didn’t realize the board policy she adopted required masks and thought they should be recommended. She told The Courier Journal she wanted to make a similar move earlier this month, but stopped at Craig’s urging.
McIntosh also supports changing the policy. Of the dozens of messages she has received from parents and teachers, she said only about five of them wanted to keep the mask in place.
“We’re in a very different place now than we were six months ago,” said McIntosh, a former teacher. “Vaccines are readily available to children, and the long-term negative impacts on student learning are becoming apparent.”
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Other board members were undecided before Tuesday’s meeting. Kolb, one of the board’s biggest proponents of COVID-19 mitigation policies, previously said he would not answer a hypothetical question because the mask policy is not on the agenda.
Porter did not say how he would vote, but said he looks forward to “the discussion as we express constituent and school opinions from each of our districts.”
Supporters of an optional mask policy often point to the availability of vaccinations against COVID-19 as a reason to waive the requirement. Only a third of JCPS’s 95,000 students have at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine. Far fewer have received a booster shot.
Areas represented by board members who plan to vote on lifting the mask requirement tend to have higher student vaccination rates than areas represented by the other four board members, an analysis of district data suggests.
High-needs elementary schools in the West End and south Louisville are among the least vaccinated. Of the 10 schools with the lowest vaccination rates, half are represented by Porter. Three others are represented by Duncan, who plans to vote yes.
JCPS is in its fourth week of mask requests as Jefferson County remains at the highest level of COVID-19.
More:Dozens of protesters demand JCPS lift mask mandate
Some vocal parents protested the return of the mask before the school year. A new teachers union survey shows that just over half of teachers – 52% – oppose the mask requirement. More than a third support it. The level of opposition is lower than the original poll, which had to be redone after some teachers feared the poll had been infiltrated by non-union anti-maskers.
District leaders appeared hopeful that updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would help them navigate a mask decision, but the guidance issued Thursday did not change mask rules for schools.
Craig called the new instruction “disappointing.”
“The majority of the community is against the mandate and wants the option to make their own decision,” he said in a thread on Twitter Thursday. “My school board district is very clearly against the mandate and has made its views clear to me.”
Kolb posted on Twitter a few hours later: “Pretty poor form to try to challenge the school board’s life and death policies on Twitter. Jesus.”
Contact Olivia Krauth at [email protected] and on Twitter at @oliviakrauth.
