Heights board keeps masks optional on school buses

As students across the country return to school amid increases in COVID-19 cases, many school districts are mandating that even if facial coverings are optional in the classroom, masks should be worn by all students riding buses to school.

Members of the Jackson Heights USD 335 Board of Education on Monday joined Superintendent Jim Howard in affirming their commitment to keeping masks optional on school buses as well as in classrooms.

“I think you can do whatever’s best for your school, and you’d be right on either end of it,” Howard told board members during their regular monthly meeting. “It just seems foolish to me to not have masks in the school, and then we bus 85 percent of our kids, and what do they do with the mask? They slip them in the bag, and they’re dirty and then they put them back on… It doesn’t make much sense.”

Howard also said that district teachers could ask students to voluntarily wear masks in their classrooms, noting that those teachers could not “mandate” masks in class.

It was reported that on Monday, board members at Jackson County’s other two school districts — Holton and Royal Valley — released “operational guidelines” for mask wearing that keeps mask use optional in class but requires bus riders to wear masks on their way to and from school.

Those guidelines reflect guidance issued by the federal Centers for Disease Control requiring face coverings by people who use public transportation — including school buses — regardless of their vaccination status.

Howard said the CDC’s mandate is “unenforceable,” even though he noted that “there will be a lot of schools that are going to force students to wear masks on the bus… I would rather be the type who says, ‘I disagree with the language.’”

However, he ruled out a total ban on masks on the bus or in class, and board members were reminded that any student or staff member would be allowed to wear a mask in either situation if they so desired.

Masks will also remain an option in classrooms, even when teachers express a desire to have students wear masks while in class, Howard said in response to a question from board member Ed Rostetter on whether teachers would be allowed to require students to wear them.

For more on this story, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account and select the Aug. 11, 2021 edition under “E-Editions.”