Former SC Superintendent of Education says masks in schools should be local decision

We and our elected officials all say that our children are our most loved and important resource. And, most of us - especially since our experience of last year with the challenges of instructing our own children at home - realize that teachers are an essential resource for our children and for our future as a state.

And yet, before adjourning for the remainder of the summer and much of the fall semester, a majority of our elected representatives in Columbia decided to not only ignore the growing threat to our children and teachers known as the Delta variant, but decided to pass a proviso that prohibited our publicly-funded schools and universities from even considering mandates to require masks to protect the health of those we profess to love and value.

And so, today, local school boards and trustees find themselves on a constantly evolving battlefield with a surging and highly infectious virus that seems to be awaiting the inevitable opportunities of an opening school year with congested school buses, classrooms, cafeterias, and after school activities.

School boards and university trustees, whose members were elected by the citizens in their districts or appointed by the Legislature to provide for the education and welfare of their institutions’ students and employees, now stand on this evolving battlefield without being allowed to consider the one preventative measure being strongly recommended by the CDC, our own Department of Health and Environmental Control, and virtually the entire medical community - universal in-school masking.

Locally elected school boards and university trustees are supposed to govern and protect the best interests of their respective institutions because they are equipped to understand the needs of their institutions and those they serve. They are most likely to be able to accurately judge the particular needs and threats during this evolving health crisis. They, and they alone, are best equipped to respond quickly to changing conditions and to be held accountable for their decisions - not a group of politically-motivated professional politicians who are now “missing in action” from their Columbia chambers.

The elected representatives in Columbia, who have now adjourned and abandoned this battlefield, have told our children (most of whom are too young to be vaccinated), teachers, bus drivers, coaches, parents, and others that they are on their own, all in the name of a warped definition of “freedom.” What about the “freedom” to choose to implement the best evidence-based practices to provide community protection to those who teach and learn in our state’s publicly funded schools and colleges?

We have learned that nobody can totally predict how this virus will continue to evolve or what the toll will be on our children, their families, or our educators in the weeks and months ahead. We do know, however, that when facing any unpredictable and powerful foe, it is always best to have the “freedom” to adapt and utilize every option available.

The South Carolina Legislature and the Constitutional Officers who support their decision to prohibit the consideration of mandating masking in our public schools and colleges have taken away the option of implementing a practice that may very well become essential to protecting the health of our citizens and to protecting the ability of our schools and colleges to remain open.

The coronavirus is still a formidable threat to America and the world. This is not the time for politics and partisanship to make our struggle against it even more difficult.

The South Carolina Legislature should immediately return to Columbia and vote to withdraw the budget provisos that prohibit the consideration of mandatory masking in our public schools and institutions of higher education.