Masks are no longer required in Beaufort County schools, with one exception
As of Wednesday, Beaufort County students can choose not to wear a mask at school as long as their parents agree.
That’s the result of S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive order issued Tuesday evening preventing school districts and local governments from imposing mask requirements on students or residents.
Prior to Wednesday, Beaufort County School District was still requiring masks in school buildings and on buses, but had stopped conducting daily temperature checks and requiring masks during outdoor activities, superintendent Frank Rodriguez said.
That was in line with guidance from the S.C. Department of Education, which was saying as late as Tuesday morning that masks would be required until the end of the school year, according to The State newspaper.
But McMaster’s order overrode that guidance, leaving school districts scrambling to enforce it.
The education department edited its guidance Wednesday morning so that it no longer includes a section requiring students to wear masks.
Rodriguez said Wednesday he was “blindsided” by the order, and that it hadn’t come up in a meeting between State Superintendent Molly Spearman and the district superintendents late last week.
When students arrived at school Wednesday, a form promised by the governor that parents could use to opt out of mask-wearing hadn’t yet been published.
Instead, Rodriguez told parents in a Tuesday night voicemail that they could send their children to school with a note to opt out of wearing a mask.
The form was published at 11 a.m. Wednesday by the Department of Heath and Environmental Control. In a Twitter thread containing a link to the form, the Department noted that its recommendations on wearing masks “had not changed” and that “all students, staff, and others in schools should continue to wear masks through the end of the current school year.”
Parents must include their phone number, email and their student’s ID number in the form. They also have to sign a section that releases the school, district and state agencies from “any and all liability associated with the student not wearing a face covering.” A separate form must be completed for each child.
There is one place that students will still need to wear masks: The school bus. Rodriguez said that the district will still enforce President Joe Biden’s executive order to require masks on public transportation vehicles, a category that includes school buses.
Some schools addressed the change in their Wednesday morning announcements.
Denise Lessard, assistant principal at Battery Creek High School, said some students brought notes Wednesday morning asking to opt out.
“Please send in a note with your phone number with your child stating you’re OK with them not wearing a mask anymore, and then we’ll verify the note and they’ll be all set,” she said. “Safety and health and wellness of everyone is our number one priority, but we want everyone to know what their options are.”
Rodriguez said he was still waiting to see how many students were opting out of wearing masks, and that no decisions had been made to change other district COVID protocols or change any planned events, such as the outdoor graduation ceremonies slated for next month.
Wednesday morning, Rodriguez said he’d heard from “10 to 12” staff members since the announcement expressing concerns at McMaster’s new guidance.
“Masks were one of our mitigation strategies, and obviously an important one we had in place,” Rodriguez said. “But we still have distancing in classrooms and those types of mitigation strategies aside from masks. We’ll continue working with those recommendations in the meantime.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2021 at 12:34 PM.