As Beaufort County relaxes mask mandates, will schools follow suit? What we know
While Beaufort County and the Town of Bluffton have gotten rid of their mask mandates, Beaufort County School District isn’t following suit — at least, not unless the state says it can.
Superintendent Frank Rodriguez addressed the topic at Tuesday’s school board meeting after District 5 representative Tricia Fidrych asked for an update on masks.
He said he expected to hear questions about masks “quite frequently from parents in the weeks to come” due to the motions from local governments.
The S.C. Department of Education is requiring students and staff to wear masks in school buildings, hallways, carpool lines and bus stops, he said.
“That, I believe, is certainly in effect through the school year unless they change it in the weeks ahead,” Rodriguez said. “But for the moment, it’s in there.”
Tuesday marked the first full school board meeting since the Beaufort County Council, Bluffton’s Town Council and Port Royal’s Town Council voted last week against extending their emergency mask mandates, which have been in place since summer of 2020.
Beaufort City Council is expected to discuss its mask mandate at its April 27 meeting, and Hilton Head Island’s Town Council is expected to do the same May 4. Their mask mandates are slated to expire April 30 and May 16, respectively, if the councils don’t pass an extension.
The school district has seen a significant decrease in COVID-19 cases and quarantines since January, which marked the first time students had five days a week of in-person instruction since March 2020.
Rodriguez said Tuesday that the district had reported 16 COVID-19 cases (15 students and one staff member) and 213 active quarantines (200 students and 13 staff members) in the “active” window of the last two weeks.
That’s way down from the district’s peak, when more than 1,600 students and staff were quarantining and 165 cases were reported from Jan. 11-24.
This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 4:00 AM.