Maryland State Board of Education approves rule requiring students, staff wear masks in school

All Maryland public school students and staff will be required to wear masks in school buildings in the coming weeks following passage of an emergency regulation by the state board Thursday afternoon.

The regulation will standardize rules for returning to school across the state, as cases of the delta variant rise and school leaders have struggled to chart a course for a safe reopening. It forces five school systems, including Carroll County, to change mask-wearing rules on the eve of a return to a more normal school routine.

Republican Gov. Larry Hogan had declined to issue a mask mandate, leaving it in the hands of local school boards.

The mandate will likely reduce the risk that thousands of students might be quarantined for at least seven days if a student or teacher tested positive in a school that didn’t require masks, based on U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

However, it is likely to inflame some anti-mask parents who have protested outside school board meetings and staunchly defended what they say is their right to choose whether their children attend school unmasked.

In passing the emergency regulation, the state board has contradicted Hogan in an unusually independent move not seen during pandemic. The vote comes just two months after the arrival of a new state superintendent, Mohammed Choudhury, who has strongly recommended schools require masks.

But Choudhury expressed not just concern about the possible increase in coronavirus cases in unvaccinated children, but in the logistical nightmare that might appear in districts where students were unmasked. In states where schools opened earlier this month without mask mandates, thousands of children are quarantined, schools have been closed and governors are in legal and political fights with district leaders who have defied their orders and issued mask mandates.

Choudhury and the state school board chair said last week they didn’t have the authority to require masks, but then reversed course, deciding to hold a special board meeting Thursday to take up the issue because the Maryland Attorney General’s Office had said they could use an emergency regulation.

The new regulation must be approved by a legislative committee, but Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat from Baltimore, said he expected the joint committee to approve the regulation.

“I have very little doubt that [the Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review] would move it quickly. I think there is a universal sense that this delta variant is something different and we have to keep kids in schools,” Ferguson said. “We will do whatever we can to expedite it.”

The emergency regulation can take effect 10 days after it is received by the committee, and is only effective for 180 days unless the board later approves it during a normal regulatory process.

With a statewide mask mandate in place, legislators could turn to advocating for districts to require staff to be vaccinated. A legislative hearing on the issue is scheduled for Monday.

Shortly before the meeting began, Baltimore County resident Sandy Moser stood outside the board meeting room with protest signs that said the virus has a 99.3% survival rate and it was unnecessary to mask children. The grandmother said she believes masks suppress the immune system and don’t allow children to get fresh air and sunshine.

Moser said she wants to see proof that masks work to stop the spread of the virus. The CDC has offered evidence that masks do work to protect individuals from the virus.