PITTSBORO, Feb. 24—The Chatham County Board of Education met to affirm the transition to optional masking in Chatham’s public school buildings starting Monday, Mar. 7. This plan has been in motion since early February. It would make wearing face masks optional while inside Chatham County Schools, but still required when on school transportation. At the time of the meeting, masking while on school transportation was a federal mandate that could not be overridden by the school board, but just a day after the Board met, the CDC revealed their updated COVID guidelines, which no longer included required masking on school buses.
Chatham County Schools Superintendent Anthony Jackson headed the meeting and presented the thought process behind lifting the mask mandate for the board’s consideration.
“Those who have decided to get vaccines have had the full opportunity for the full [immunization] cycle,” Jackson said. “We feel that we have given everyone the opportunity to [get vaccinated]; we’re ready to move forward. The data is moving in the right direction; we’ve talked to our health department, we’ve talked to all of those who support us. We believe they’re ready to move forward.”
Superintendent Jackson cited Chatham’s slowing rates of COVID positivity and transmission when discussing the data that led the board to drop the mask mandate. There were 20 new COVID cases in Chatham County the day of this Board meeting–there were 22 the day before and 21 the day after. While these numbers are down from the COVID statistics of last year, some students are still concerned about attending school with no mask mandate in place.
“It’s pretty dumb of them to [lift the mandate],” junior Ron Walker said. “Right now COVID cases are low; as soon as you take off the masks and wait a couple months, it’s going to spike up.”
“For this [altering COVID-19 guidelines], we look to the metrics, including case rates, hospitalizations, and vaccinations,” Chatham County Public Health Director Mike Zelek told The Omniscient (read The Omniscient’s full Q&A with Zelek here.) “In the last 6 weeks, we have come a long way from the peak of the Omicron surge. Case rates per 100,000 residents over the past 7 days topped out at over 1,400 in mid-January and recently fell to below 100, which is no longer considered high community transmission.”
