OCPS Mask Requirements
By: Fendy Li
Covid-19 has affected many lives, families, friends, and communities. With this pandemic going on a lot of things have changed, for example during the school year of 2020-2021 students had an option of either Face-to-Face or LaunchED learning which was new to everyone including the teachers on how to teach students that were both online and in class. Everyone including the teachers, staff, visitors, and students were all required to wear a mask unless they had a doctor’s note saying that they have a condition that causes them to not be able to wear a mask. When the 2021-2022 school year started, they decided that they would still have everyone be required to wear a mask which lasted till October 30th 2021 until they could make a decision on if they should extend this requirement or change it based on how the virus progresses.
There were many different opinions from parents and families when the school board was making a decision. There were 2 sides that both expressed their opinions and concerns to the Orange County School Board 30 minutes before the meeting. The side that wanted to extend the mask mandate argued that some younger kids might not be able to get fully vaccinated yet, so the masks were their only protection against the virus. So they tried to ask the school board to at least extend the mandate to winter break or until the end of the first semester so they can get their kids vaccinated. Some also asked them to extend the mask mandate because there isn’t really a bad reason for wearing a mask unless you have a condition, which is excused from it. While the other side of people that wanted to end the mandate just said that they would be very glad if they got rid of it.
When the time slowly approached October 30th, OCPS decided to change the mask mandate. They decided to still require masks but there is a parental opt out option so if the parents decided that they wanted their child to go to school without masks then they would write a note with their signature saying that they want to opt their child out of the mask requirement. The students with the notes then would show it to their teacher or front office staff to check it into the system so that they don’t get into trouble for not wearing their mask. Afterwards, OCPS also decided that their employees or staff could also opt out of the mask requirement if they wanted. Since on the day they decided to announce this news, their 7 day incident rate was 45.7 per 100,000 residents which should have moved their CDC level of transmission in the community down from “orange” to “yellow” or moderate.
The covid cases did go down during the time when they made the decision to change the mandate to parent opt out. But there were 543 new covid cases on November 30th for Orange County. A new coronavirus strain was found called omicron variant, scientists explained that this virus has mutations that may allow it to spread more quickly and it might cause more breakthrough infections in vaccinated people or previously infected people but they aren’t fully sure yet. Many experts have predicted that there would be a surge over the winter in the U.S. even if the omicron variant doesn’t spread widely in the country. Biden has decided to urge people to get their vaccines and booster shots if eligible. Some experts have argued that testing and wearing a mask are also essential to containing the virus especially if the new variant is found to evade protection from the vaccine, but Biden’s administration’s pandemic task force heavily relied on vaccines.
Some parents and students are relieved that there was a parent opt out option because they felt like the masks were too uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. While some people disagree with the parent opt out option since it was confirmed before that the covid vaccines don’t make you immune to Covid-19, it just makes your symptoms less severe if you had it so that means vaccinated people can still get covid and spread it to others. “The mask mandate is too loose in my opinion. Covid numbers aren’t getting better and vaccines aren’t really an excuse to not wear a mask, especially since people can still get it and pass it to others. I think everyone should go back to being required to wear a mask no matter what. I’d rather feel uncomfortable for a few hours than get covid,” said sophomore Jaila Warren. “I think masks should be required even though it means that some of our freedom would be taken away, by requiring everyone to wear a mask can prevent many people from getting covid-19 and it could save lives. So I agree with requiring everyone to wear masks because just by doing something small and easy like wearing a mask can help us get through this pandemic faster,” said junior Jialing Gu.
Many students have decided to not wear masks on campus anymore even when they’re all hanging out in a group of people because the masks are too uncomfortable to wear throughout the school day.
