HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Masks will be required in all Pennsylvania K-12 schools, Gov. Tom Wolf was set to announce Tuesday, reversing course amid a statewide COVID-19 resurgence that is filling hospital beds just as students return to class.
The Department of Health order will take effect Tuesday, Sept. 7 — a week or more after the start of school in many districts — and will require students, teachers and staff to wear masks when inside, according to two people briefed on the plan. The people were not authorized to release details ahead of an official announcement and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The order will not apply to student-athletes while they’re playing, the people said. One of the people said the masking order will apply to private as well as public schools and will also apply to child care facilities.
Wolf and administration officials were scheduled to hold a news conference on COVID-19 and the schools at 2 p.m. Tuesday. Wolf declined comment when a reporter asked him about the mask mandate outside his Capitol offices Tuesday morning.
The Democratic governor took action after the Republican leaders of the House and Senate rejected his request to pass legislation requiring masks in classrooms. GOP lawmakers acknowledged that coronavirus cases are again surging across the state but insisted that local leaders were best positioned to respond to the pandemic.
Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford, said Tuesday that the 10 school districts he represents have worked up their own plans to mitigate COVID-19. He said the coming statewide mandate makes him “beyond furious.”
“If somehow they’re trying to find a way to take this away, that will be a breathtaking example of bureaucratic overreach,” said Topper, a senior member of the House Education Committee.
Less than a month ago, Wolf himself had ruled out a statewide mask mandate for schools after requiring them last year. But the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus has changed the administration’s calculus about what is needed to keep students in class.
Pennsylvania is now averaging more than 3,200 new, confirmed infections daily — 20 times the number of cases it was reporting on a typical day in early July. More than 1,700 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, up sevenfold since last month. Deaths have doubled in two weeks to about 20 per day.
Pennsylvania’s two statewide teachers unions had urged K-12 schools to require masks in school buildings, citing delta’s threat. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masks in schools for students, staff and teachers.
But masking is a highly contentious issue, and school board meetings have been the scene of heated debate as parents argue for and against. Last week, parents of special needs children sued a suburban Philadelphia school board that refused to mandate masks.
Some schools have reimposed mask mandates on their own after starting out the year without them.
The North Schuylkill School District began requiring masks indoors after it was forced to quarantine 60 students. It said only 11 students would have needed to quarantine if masking had been in place.
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