Masks Mandated In Marshall County Schools Starting Monday
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Marshall County Schools started its year with mask wearing in schools as an option. The worsening COVID-19 numbers in the Northern Panhandle eliminated any options starting Monday.
In an emergency meeting Thursday, the Marshall County School Board voted unanimously to mandate mask wearing in schools starting Monday. On that day, face coverings must be worn by all administrators, faculty, staff, students and visitors in any indoor facility owned and operated by Marshall County Schools, regardless of their vaccination status, if they are within 6 feet of one another. Face coverings must also be worn on buses to and from school and extracurricular activities.
Masks should be worn indoors on school premises after hours as well.
Marshall County Schools Superintendent Shelby Haines said there were two main factors that led to the decision — a ruling from the West Virginia School Board that schools with universal mask mandates would not be forced to quarantine and that schools without that mandate must quarantine anyone within 6 feet of a COVID-19 positive person.
"By increasing the contact tracing to 6 feet, I predict we will double or triple the number of students quarantined," Haines said. "Following the guidelines given to us, a universal indoor mask procedure is the only way to maintain consistent, in-person learning."
An earlier rule from the West Virginia Department of Education mandated that people who were within 3 to 6 feet of an infected person needed to quarantine, as opposed to an entire classroom. With that rule, Marshall County Schools had to quarantine almost 150 students in the first 12 days of school.
The school district's main mission is to keep students in school and in face-to-face learning, board president John Miller said.
"With the current guidelines given to us, a mask procedure is the only way to keep students in face-to-face instruction," he said. "The mask procedure will focus on the academic environment. Masks will be always worn while indoors during the school day unless seated and more than 6 feet away from others."