RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — Carla Leonard has two sons under the age of 6 and said raising them during a pandemic out of their Central Virginia colonial-style home has been tough.
Last year she managed to get them in day care while she and her husband worked, but now that option isn’t available and her local school district is set to open its doors in the coming weeks. She’s been following her school board’s actions on masks but was less than thrilled with an early plan that allowed for a doctor’s notes to be used as an excuse for maskless students.
“All of us have a different idea of what makes us comfortable so it makes it harder,” Leonard, a pseudonym she asked to use to protect her family from public backlash, said in a phone interview. “Children may not die often from Covid-19, but it’s still a threat.”
Local news reports tell stories of children and teens on ventilators, while the state’s Department of Health put the number of Covid-19 deaths under the age of 18 at six.
So when Leonard heard Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, issued an order Thursday requiring universal masking in all indoor settings in K-12 schools, she was a bit relieved.
“I’m proud of the parents who have come together to show that they care. We’ve done what we can for our children,” she said. “But I’ve seen entire families not wear a mask in the grocery store when it was mandated and it's emotionally jarring.”
Northam issued the order under the authority of the state’s commissioner of health, however he’s faced heat for its overlap with a law passed during a special legislative session in response to the pandemic. It requires schools to adhere “to the maximum extent practicable” to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which now include masking for all students, teachers and staff.
“We all share the same goal of keeping our schools open and keeping our students safe,” Northam said in a statement Thursday. “This public health order makes it very clear that masks are required in all indoor K-12 settings, and Virginia expects all schools to comply.”
But state legislators from both sides of the aisle who helped craft and voted in support of the legislation are already questioning the move.
“Clearly the governor agrees with me that [the legislation] does not in fact impose any mask mandate,” said Senator Siobhan S. Dunnavant, R-Henrico. “If it did, he wouldn’t have had to issue his statewide mandate.”
Her comments were echoed by Senator Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, who similarly called Northam’s order an overreach.
“The entire purpose of the bill was to give local school boards flexibility in adopting mitigation strategies,” he said in a statement. “It did not give some super power to the governor or his health commissioner, who have no role in managing locally-owned public schools.”
Dunnavant, a practicing gynecologist, also criticized Northam, a pediatric neurologist, over prior school closures, claiming he was disregarding “science, evidence and even the definitive position of his own medical specialty board, the American Academy of Pediatrics."
School opening guidance from the AAP released in July suggests masking in schools for anyone over the age of 2, even those who are fully vaccinated.
“Combining layers of protection that include vaccinations, masking and clean hands hygiene will make in-person learning safe and possible for everyone,” wrote Dr. Sonja O’Leary, chair of the AAP Council on School Health, in a post announcing the suggested measures.
Follow @@BradKutner
