Two weeks after deciding to start the school year with masks optional for students and staff, Lowndes County School District will now require mask-wearing indoors on all its campuses for at least the next month.
Further, an outbreak at Caledonia High School is forcing those students to learn virtually for the next two weeks.
The school board on Friday unanimously approved the district wide mask requirement at Superintendent Sam Allison’s recommendation. Rather than leave the mandate open-ended, the board will decide at each board meeting whether to renew it.
“We’ve seen several cases in our schools. Some schools have been hit harder than others,” Allison told the board. “Where we’ve had a ‘mask optional or mask highly recommended — and we have a lot of folks wearing masks across our district and a lot that aren’t — now we need to change our plan to require masks indoors by our students, teachers and guests until the COVID numbers get back to where we feel like it can be a choice.”
Board member Brian Clark initially asked for the requirement to be effective for only two weeks but ultimately agreed on month-to-month renewal.
“I want to support your work on it. I know it’s a tough call, and I know the community views (the issue) multiple ways,” Clark said. “It’s divided politically. … I lost a lot of sleep last night trying to figure out what the right call is.”
Allison said he did not want to “debate masks,” but rather follow the recommendations of the Mississippi State Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Any students or staff who don’t bring their own masks to school will be provided one, he said.
“In this position, I tend to try to listen to everybody and be respectful of everyone’s opinions. … If we can do something to stop the spread even a little bit we need to do it,” Allison said. “We have lots of masks. We’ll encourage people to bring their own, but hopefully our people we have in place will have plenty, and if our kids need them they can give them to them.”
The two-week switch to virtual for Caledonia High came from state-level recommendations as well, Allison said. It not only affects classes, he said, but forces the school to cancel or postpone athletic and other extracurricular events, including the planned football season opener against cross-county rival New Hope originally scheduled for Aug. 26.
“It wasn’t like we had much warning, but we have a plan in place. Our teachers will have to plan a little differently, and we’ll try to maintain our schedule,” Allison said. “It should be a productive two weeks. … I don’t expect (it to be) smooth, but whatever comes our way we have the wherewithal to tackle the challenges.”
Columbus Municipal and Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated school districts began the school year with mask mandates in place.
Heritage Academy, a private school in Columbus, enacted a mask mandate Friday for its kindergarten through sixth grades, according to an email school leaders sent to parents. The letter stated the policy only applied to elementary school since those students did not qualify for the vaccine.
Sports Editor Tom Rysinski and reporters Tyler B. Jones and Miles Layton contributed to this report.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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