ABILENE, TX – Last week, dueling online petitions called on the Round Rock school district to either remove or sustain its mask requirements.
Following a heated debate Thursday, the board of trustees voted to continue following its established mask protocols.
A recent change from the Texas Education Agency allows school boards to loosen or remove their masking protocols. Over 1,700 people signed an online petition asking the board to make masks optional.
Many speakers attended the Thursday meeting to make the same plea to the board. Others have been emailing the board or sharing their concerns online. Some parents said they would pull their children from the district if the mask mandate continued.
However, a separate petition asking the board to keep masks in place received over 3,000 signatures. Other community members spoke in front of the board to defend the requirements, including pointing out that the coronavirus has disproportionately affected Black and Hispanic communities, while vaccination rates remain lower in those communities.
“Our community should not be making decisions for other people,” said Trustee Tiffanie Harrison, who supports mask-wearing as a way to ensure the safety of all staff and students.
Texas mask mandate lifted
While Texas no longer has a mask mandate, the CDC and other health authorities still back the importance of wearing masks.
According to district policy, all students, teachers, staff and adult visitors should wear a face mask on buses, inside school buildings and on school grounds. Students may remove their masks during outdoor activities such as P.E. classes and recess as long as they are social distancing.
Trustee Danielle Weston proposed removing the mask requirement entirely for students under the age of 10 and for all students outside and when exercising indoors. Weston said she feels health authorities have failed to come to a conclusion on wearing masks in school and that data does not support it. Her proposal was voted down.
Trustee Jun Xiao said Weston and Trustee Mary Bone, who also supports loosening mask requirements, lack the background to interpret data on masking and have sought out research to prove their point without understanding the overall body of research around coronavirus safety measures.
“The thing that angers me the most, more than anything else, is when those who have the knowledge, resources and access to the system can always rig the game in the name of rules and laws,” Xiao said. “The second thing that really aggravates me, that makes me fume, is politics in the name of science.”
Round Rock students to keep masks on
Xiao said he has an elementary-age child and has seen students younger than 10 wearing masks without issues.
“There is no doubt COVID took a heavy toll on many people, adults and children,” Xiao said. “Whether it’s from the anger and frustration of social isolation or the fear and anxiety of contracting the virus, or the sorrow of losing family members and dear friends. … Please do not paint the effects of the pandemic as the effects of masks.”
He added that while he believes both Weston and Bone have the best intentions and are diligent trustees, he said their beliefs are based on misunderstanding the data and listening to their social circles.
“This isn’t two rogue trustees, this is two trustees trying to do what we have been entrusted to do,” Bone said, pointing out that new TEA guidelines ask school boards to modify or remove their mask mandates in light of Gov. Greg Abbott lifting the statewide mask mandate.
The guidelines, however, allow districts to keep the masking rules in place.
“I am going to caution this board if you are heading toward some type of police state where people are going to start reporting each other … (or) to expend any effort to force a vaccinated individual who is socially distant to wear a mask, it is not going to work,” Weston said.
At one point, Bone said she would become a “mask police,” including reporting acting Superintendent Daniel Presley for not wearing a mask while alone in the administration building.
“If we want to start a mask battle we can start that tonight,” Bone said prior to the vote. “Otherwise we can be reasonable and listen to our community and that when their children are 6 feet apart in a school building they can take their mask off. That’s reasonable.”
She said Round Rock was one of the strictest districts in terms of mask rules and asked if the board wanted to follow in Austin’s footsteps, saying that district is “going down the drain.”
Weston also said that forcing students to continue wearing masks would no longer stand up to legal scrutiny.
Presley said the district’s lawyers say the mask requirements were legal and added that he felt the district would be fine following the same protocols it has been for the majority of the school year.
“We are still in the middle of a global pandemic,” Harrison said. “And whether or not y’all want to acknowledge it, there have been several threats made tonight. And this is not productive toward what we need to do tonight.”
