Clovis schools end COVID masking requirement for students in campus classrooms
Students in Clovis Unified schools won’t be removed from class for refusing to wear a mask following a unanimous vote Wednesday during a special school board meeting.
In a note to Clovis Unified families following the vote, district officials said while the state still requires students to wear masks in classrooms, students who refuse will now be allowed to stay.
“It remains the requirement that all students will wear face coverings while indoors at school until such time as California’s K-12 school requirements change,” district officials said in the statement.
“As part of the required enforcement, if a student arrives at school without a face covering, a mask will be offered to the student,” the statement continued. “If a student refuses to wear a mask indoors parents will be notified and reminded of the mask mandate, but a student will not be removed from class.”
The board’s motion leveraged authority granted to local school boards and ended “the protocol of excluding students from their classroom and the district.” Instead, the district will enforce the mandate “through education-based approaches,” such as posting the mandate on each school campus, encouraging observance of the mandate, and notifying parents in writing of noncompliance.
“One consistent vision of this board has been that students belong in the classroom all day, every day, right now,” said Board Member David DeFrank, who served on the board’s COVID subcommittee. “Exclusionary enforcement of the mask mandate is a hindrance to realizing this vision.
“Moreover, the current approach has drained the time and resources of our teachers, office staff, and administrators,” he said. “This is time best spent continuing their challenging and noble work of educating and caring for our students. The status quo is simply not sustainable for our staff.”
The vote was met with cheers and applause from a standing-room-only crowd of around 175 people, including parents and students. Over a dozen parents and students spoke during public comment seeking “mask choice.”
The vote came about a week after the district announced it would end contact tracing, notification of exposure, and required testing in certain situations. Those decisions were made after receiving guidance from the Fresno County Public Health Department.
DeFrank said the district’s current COVID-19 test positivity rate for employees was 0.001%, and for students it was 0.0033%.
California’s indoor mask mandate ended earlier this month, with the exception of students and teachers in schools. But, many school districts are defying the rules anyway. Last week, the Sierra Unified school board voted to drop the student masking requirements, making them optional for students and staff.
After the vote, parent Amanda Tejeda said she and her first-grade daughter were “ecstatic” about the decision. Earlier that day, her daughter was in her principal’s office because she was having a hard time keeping her mask on, Tejeda said. She’s been attending school board meetings since September asking the board not to enforce masking.
“I have no problem with other people wanting to wear the masks. That’s their right, under God,” Tejeda said. “In this country, you have the right to wear your mask, and we don’t want to bully anybody for their decision to wear their mask. But I can’t force that on every child.”
Tejeda said her daughter is looking forward to going to school Thursday and sitting in her classroom with her friends again, rather than spending the school day in the office.
Buchanan High School senior Rami Zwebti — who previously was booed at a school board meeting for supporting COVID-19 precautions such as masking — said the board’s decision made them sick.
“Even after I shared how losing my neighbor impacted me and my community, and even after I spoke at the podium with tears in my eyes and my hands shaking, I was still ignored,” Zwebti said. “As someone who is immunocompromised and high-risk, I can’t help but feel inferior to everyone else. Even though it is not my choice to have Type 1 diabetes, I still have to suffer the consequences every single day.”
Zwebti said many of their classmates also worry going maskless will cause COVID-19 cases to rise.
“The people at the forefront of education aren’t keeping students’ safety in mind,” Zwebti said. “If we don’t take action soon to ensuring that all students, including immunocompromised students, are safe, then we will surely see the consequences.”
Teachers at risk?
While board members and district administrators praised the work of teachers and staff during the difficulties of the pandemic, Kristin Heimerdinger, spokesperson for the Association of Clovis Educators (ACE), said, to her knowledge, teachers were not included in the decision-making process.
Mostly, teachers have questions about how the new policy will look in classrooms, she said.
“We do find it regrettable that as teachers, we’re being placed in the middle where we have to decide if we want to enforce the state mandate or enforce our school board decision,” Heimerdinger said. “Because those absolutely conflict with one another, and it’s made clear in the state guidance that failing to enforce a mask mandate can have consequences.”
That was an issue addressed during the board’s discussion. State guidelines from August also require teachers to wear face coverings indoors when with students, and if they refuse, their teaching credential could be revoked.
DeFrank said the board’s COVID working group did not want to put teachers and administrators in jeopardy.
“We knew that we could not look our teachers and administrators in the eye and say, ‘We don’t care about the consequences of risking your credential.’ That was an unacceptable risk,” he said.
That’s part of the reason why the board tailored its new policy around enforcement rather than opting out of the mandate, he said.
Superintendent Eimear O’Brien said she is hopeful lawmakers in Sacramento will change the policy soon.
Being left out of decision-making processes during the pandemic was a contributing reason for Clovis educators to begin organizing for unionization, Heimerdinger said.
“COVID really put those decision-making processes under a microscope,” she said. “(Wednesday’s decision) reinforces that teachers and other educators need an avenue to have their voice represented.”
Like the rest of the population, teachers have a variety of viewpoints on wearing masks, she said.
“The issue of masking is one where there are no easy answers and easy solutions,” she said.
Copper Hills incident
Many of the parents who spoke during public comment were parents of Copper Hills Elementary students.
Ashley Full said parents organized on social media to stage an “unmasked in class” demonstration Wednesday, where a group of parents would walk onto campus and into their child’s classroom to stand up against the masking rules. If Clovis students refused to wear a mask, they were sent to a multipurpose room.
To prevent having indoor environments full of unmasked students and parents, school officials switched the school day schedule so that P.E. and recess were in the morning, said Kelly Avants, a spokesperson for Clovis Unified.
“The intention was to keep students out of an indoor setting,” she said.
That meant most of the school’s students were outside in the morning, sparking outrage among parents because of the cold temperatures. Early Wednesday, temperatures were in the mid to high 30s.
Full said some students were only wearing shorts and t-shirts, and some children came home crying.
Eventually, students brought their class materials outside and worked in pods on picnic tables, Full said.
One parent who spoke during public comment called it child abuse.
“Today, Copper Hills was broken. This is the darkest day in Clovis Unified’s history,” one mother said.
This story was originally published February 23, 2022 at 4:25 PM.
CORRECTION: The original headline for this story incorrectly reported that Wednesday’s vote also applied to district staff. It does not apply to district staff.