Masks will be required inside all K-12 schools, early learning programs and child care providers in Pennsylvania beginning next week as statewide COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to climb, Gov. Tom Wolf announced on Tuesday.
The order signed by Acting Secretary of Health Allison Beam will go into effect on Sept. 7 and requires all students, teachers, staff and visitors to wear masks inside school and day care buildings until further notice.
Masks will not be required outdoors, while participating in sports, during high-intensity physical education activities, and while engaged in an activity that cannot be performed with a mask, such as eating, drinking or playing an instrument.
“Our commonwealth and our nation are in a different place now than we were just a month ago and our students need our help right now to stay safe and stay in school,” Wolf said during a press conference.
The mandate aligns with Centers for Disease Control recommendations and is backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the state’s largest teacher’s union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
In late July, Wolf administration officials said they had no plans to institute a school masking mandate.
But fueled by the more highly contagious Delta variant, Pennsylvania has seen a resurgence of the virus over the past month. Daily case increases are now averaging more than 3,000, compared to fewer than 300 a day in July. More than 1,800 COVID-19 patients are hospitalized across the state, the most since early May after dropping to their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic in early July. Over the past two weeks, the state has reported an average of 17 new COVID-19 deaths per day, a sharp increase from the average of five per day last month.
Last week, Wolf called on the General Assembly to return from summer recess to pass legislation mandating masks in schools. Republican leaders of the GOP-controlled House and Senate rejected the request, saying such decisions should be made on a local level.
“I preferred for local school boards to make this decision. Unfortunately, an aggressive nationwide campaign is spreading misinformation about mask-wearing and pressuring and intimidating school districts to reject mask policies that will keep kids safe and in school,” Wolf said. “As we see cases among children increase in Pennsylvania and throughout the country, this is especially dangerous and challenging as we seek to keep kids in school and maintain a safe and healthy learning environment.”
Just two school districts in Centre County — State College and Penns Valley — instituted mask mandates to start the school year.
In the past month, COVID-19 cases among school-aged children have increased by more than 11,000, according to the Department of Health. According to data reported to the Department of Human Services, licensed child care facilities reported 162 COVID-19 cases among enrolled children, up from just eight in early June.
“With case counts increasing, the situation has reached the point that we need to take this action to protect our children, teachers and staff,” Beam said. “The science is clear. If we want to keep our schools open, maintain classroom learning and allow sports and other activities to continue, masking significantly increases our chances of doing so.”
Dr. Trude Haecker, president of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that because children 12 and under are not yet eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, masking is the next best defense and an important measure for keeping students in the classroom. Many schools remained open last year at the height of the pandemic with little spread of COVID-19 “mostly due to mask mandates,” she said.
“Over the past 18 months of the pandemic, so many children have fallen woefully behind in all aspects of their lives,” Haecker said. “The return to in-person school this fall is crucial to our children’s educational success and to their mental health. Unfortunately, due to the increase in the delta variant as the governor has mentioned, we are already beginning to see that in-person school can lead to high volumes of exposure with rapid spread of infection. The result will be more quarantining, an increase in academic loss and further exacerbation of stress, anxiety and depression in the young people we serve.”
The Academy recommends a “multi-layered” approach, Haecker said, that includes vaccine availability, universal masking, improved ventilation, testing and quarantine programs and cleaning and disinfecting procedures.
“Combining these layers of protection will make in-person learning safe and possible for our children in Pennsylvania,” she said.
Swift GOP backlash
Tuesday’s announcement was quickly met with a critical response from Republicans in the General Assembly, including two high-ranking legislators from Centre County.
“Protecting the health and safety of our children is always a top consideration for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said in a statement. “However, this is exactly the kind of government overreach voters opposed when they stripped Governor Wolf of the authority to unilaterally extend emergency declarations in May.”
Corman added that it is “completely disingenuous for [Wolf] to flip-flop now,” after saying during the summer that the decision was best left to local officials based on current data.
“The timing of this announcement is also extremely problematic,” Corman said. “Over the past month, school board meetings were turned into public spectacles with school board directors, parents, teachers and community members lobbing insults and accusations. It is disappointing Governor Wolf stood idly by and allowed our communities to be torn apart by this debate, only to pull the rug out from everyone at the last minute. Our school boards deserve an apology for the governor’s dereliction of duty.”
He also questioned Beam’s authority to enforce a mandatory masking order. The Wolf administration said in a statement the Secretary of Health is provided with the authority by the Disease Control and Prevention Act and that the measure was taken because “Republican leaders declined to act,” when asked to take up legislation for a mask mandate.
“If Governor Wolf truly believed he had this authority, then he would not have asked the General Assembly to implement a mask mandate just last week,” Corman said.
State House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Bellefonte, joined Corman in condemning the mandate, saying that the decision should fall to “local control that reflects on-the-ground realities.”
“History shows that a one-sized, fits-all approach to public health causes more anxiety and frustration than decisions made at the local level with local input,” he said. “What’s more is that local control has been working. School boards and local governments have been hearing from families and individuals and making the decisions that best fit their community needs and reflect their community values.”
Benninghoff added that House Republicans “are already in the process of taking a serious look at potential legislative changes that address this administration’s misuse of current law.”
“We share in the goal of promoting public health and ending this pandemic as quickly as possible,” he said. “As we review the specifics of this mandate, all options remain on the table.”
