As Covid-19 Surges Countywide, Masking Has Helped Limit Quarantines in Schools
As Covid-19 Surges Countywide, Masking Has Helped Limit Quarantines in Schools
Though health and school officials credit mandatory masking for limiting teaching disruptions, the debate over the policy continues, and proponents decry behavior among opponents.
BREVARD — As the debate continues between opposing camps on school masking policy — and on how that debate should be conducted in public meetings — a clear picture is emerging about the impact of mandatory masking in classrooms:
Though Covid-19 cases continue to surge countywide, masking has reduced disruptions in schools by limiting the number of children and staffers placed in quarantine because of exposure to the virus.
“I’m very encouraged by the rate of quarantine,” said Transylvania County Schools Superintendent Jeff McDaris. “That is flattening out and that tells me that masking is working.”
Transylvania Public Health on Wednesday reported the number of new cases in the county during the previous seven days had climbed in one week from 147 to 176, a rate of infection “very, very similar” to that of the pandemic’s January peak, said health department spokeswoman Tara Rybka.
Especially striking, she said, is that residents under 18 now account for 37 percent of active cases, compared to 11 percent in July — a trend partly attributable to the opening of schools. She added that the department has no reports of student-age residents being hospitalized.
McDaris said he has also seen the number of infected students climb since the start of school in mid-August, though it showed a slight decline this week.
School Board members receive Covid-19 updates every week on Monday and Wednesday, he said, information they plan to begin sharing on the district’s website. This week, the number of active cases among students dropped by six between the first and second tally, to a total of 97.
The number of students in quarantine, meanwhile, dipped from 222 to 191. Nineteen staff members are currently infected, McDaris said, but only three additional employees are in quarantine because of exposure.
Public Health has identified clusters of Covid-19 infections on the football teams of both Brevard Middle School and Rosman High School, and today’s Rosman game has been cancelled.
McDaris said infections have also forced the closure of one special education class and one pre-K class in the district, and intensified an ongoing challenge of attracting substitute teachers.
“We are trudging forward, but I can tell you it sometimes feels like we’re trudging forward in mud,” he said.
It’s too soon to tell if infection rates are lower than they would be without a mandatory masking policy, Rybka said, but “masks are definitely helping with quarantine orders.”
If either an infected student or a person exposed to such a student is unmasked, the required quarantine is 14 days.
But “there is an exemption to quarantine for close contacts in classroom settings if both the person with Covid and the person exposed to Covid is wearing a mask,” she said.
Also crucial, she said: exposed students and staffers who are symptom-free and test negative for Covid-19 can cut quarantine times in half if both they and people around them are wearing masks — a situation that can only be guaranteed with a mandatory policy.
The School Board voted to back its previous decision to allow optional masking at a contentious regular meeting on Aug. 16, but reversed that decision at a special meeting held at the end of the following week.
The behavior of masking opponents in the overflow crowd at the earlier meeting was the subject of a downtown Brevard press conference held Wednesday by the Transylvania County Association of Educators (TCAE) and a group formed in the days after the meeting, the Transylvania County Parent and Community Alliance.
“I watched as devoted educators, health care workers and spiritual leaders were booed, presented with lewd gestures, disrupted and demeaned,” said Cassie Broshears, who spoke on behalf of the new group.
“As I was finishing my statement to the board, which was about unity in the community, I had a grandmother in the audience shout profanities at me.”
This aggressive behavior not only discourages residents from attending meetings to speak out in favor of masking, it sets a destructive example for students, said TCAE President Meredith Licht, a veteran English teacher at Brevard High School.
“I called this rally and press conference to express our commitment to the Golden Rule, to respectful debate and civic participation, and to working for a better tomorrow for Transylvania County’s schools and its people,” she said.
A video of the meeting shows the exchange Broshears referred to, though the words are inaudible. Audience members frequently shouted out dissenting opinions during the Board’s discussion, requiring Chair Tawny McCoy to repeatedly call for order.
Both Board vice chair Ron Kiviniemi and McDaris said concerns about a lack of decorum were legitimate.
“There were people at the meeting who were rude, quite frankly,” McDaris said.
But both they and board member Kimsey Jackson, who was less critical of the behavior, said the district had adequately staffed the meeting with Transylvania County Sheriff’s deputies both inside the meeting on Aug. 16; increasing the presence of law enforcement was one of the requests made at the press conference. McDaris said he did not know if the district had the technology to allow remote public input, which was another request.
Jessica Goff, whose daughter spoke against mandatory masking at the Aug. 16 meeting, said she didn’t see intimidating behavior either while she attended or as she watched the end of the discussion online from home, she said. She saw parents speaking up for themselves and their children.
“I thought it was all civil and us parents have every right to feel the way we feel, whether it's for masks or against masks, and we have every right to be upset,” she said.
McDaris said the next focus on controlling the pandemic should be pushing for more vaccinations.
Though he understands some of the objections to wearing masks, he said, “there is no reason for people not to be vaccinated.”
The rate of vaccination in Transylvania “continues to creep up every week,” Rybka said, and slightly more than half of county residents have received at least one dose.
Goff acknowledged that Covid-19 is spreading, but she favors “natural remedies” for treatment and prevention.
“A lot of people I know are getting Covid and they are surviving, and I still don’t know one person who has died,” she said.
“I just believe in that backwoods, traditional way of taking care of yourself rather than trusting that doctor just because he has a degree.”
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