Mask mandate continues at Wichita schools after board rejects attempt to end it

Wichita Public Schools will continue to require masks inside buildings until at least spring.

The Wichita school board rejected a proposal to drop the mandate Monday night after an hours-long debate on the effectiveness of masks at slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Republican newcomers Diane Albert and Kathy Bond led the unsuccessful charge to overturn the mandate, dismissing recommendations by the district’s medical expert and claiming masks do more harm than good.

“Masking was intended to be a short-term intervention,” Albert said. “And keeping kids in masks month-after-month also inflicts harm, even if it’s not easy to measure.”

The school board voted to reject the proposal in a 4-3 vote. Hazel Stabler, another Republican newcomer, also voted to remove the mask mandate.

Board President Stan Reeser and at-large member Sheril Logan, who both voted against dropping the mandate, said they would not consider voting to remove it until after winter.

“Let’s get through winter,” Logan said. “And then let’s review what’s going on.”

“If we remove the masks, as this motion would do, we will be closing schools,” Reeser said. “And we will be closing classes, and you will see test scores go down. You’ve got to give these kids a fighting chance.”

Wichita schools have operated under an indoor mask mandate since late August, when the school board unanimously approved the mandate for all people age 3 and older.

Inside classrooms, the spring semester has been marked by a COVID-19 surge, driven largely by the hyper-contagious omicron variant. Outside, district officials have been under increased pressure to drop COVID-19 public health rules and embrace a “learn to live with it” attitude.

Albert, Bond and Stabler won seats on the school board in November as a slate of candidates recruited by the local Republican Party, in part, to mobilize voters against mask mandates and mandatory vaccination.

Reeser canceled the board’s first meeting of the year after the three newcomers refused to comply with the district’s policy that requires face coverings inside school buildings. Later, when the board did meet, Albert asked to reconsider the district’s COVID policies.

COVID-related staffing shortages have forced multiple schools in the district to close, and officials have told parents to be prepared for classes to be canceled on short notice.

USD 259 COVID data shows a sharp decline in COVID cases in the last three weeks. Those numbers could be affected by several recent changes to the COVID response.

Last month, Wichita public schools suspended contact tracing, dropped its isolation period from 10 to five days and ended its “test to stay” protocol that required negative COVID tests for unvaccinated people who had high-risk close contacts before they returned to work or school.

As of Wednesday of last week, more than 850 employees and 772 students were in quarantine — down from 1,033 and 1,931 the week before. School was in session only Monday and Tuesday because of a winter storm.

The district has 7,632 employees and approximately 47,200 students.

Even though the virus continues to spread in schools, Albert said it’s time to drop mask mandates.

“When another school district made masking optional, do you know what happened,” Albert said. “They found that smiling became more contagious than anything else out there.”

Much of the discussion Monday night centered on a disagreement over the science behind masks between Albert, who used to own a remodeling business, and Dr. Paul Teran, a pediatrician with KU School of Medicine-Wichita and the school district’s physician on its COVID review panel.

“We keep denying the scientists that don’t agree with mainstream media and that is the main problem that we are facing right now,” Albert said. ”We are ignoring the fact that the masks are not effective. Because if they are, then the cases would go down. But they just mirror the community spread. If the masks work, then they would be working, right?”

“I believe we’ve prevented a lot of illness and mitigated a lot of sickness and likely death within Wichita Public Schools,” Teran said. “The evidence from that is looked at from the doctors that have committed their lives — me, treating pediatric patients in the hospital, my adult colleagues who are working in the Wesley and Via Christi adult ICUs and COVID units, the infectious disease specialists in our community and in Kansas and in the nation. The studies that we’re looking to are showing us that masks are a really good idea as one part of the COVID mitigation strategy.”

Albert said she has seen many competing views online.

“There are many doctors that I listen to that are taken off the internet very quickly,” Albert said. “And that’s a big problem that we need to stop ignoring because we’re assuming that this is working when the science doesn’t show it.”

“I have no responsibility over the internet and what happens,” Teran said.

Reeser attempted to rein in the discussion, calling it “a circular Facebook argument about whose studies are correct.”

“We are not going to have a debate over studies or whether COVID’s real. We are not going to quote the internet. If you want to do that, then you sign up and you go to the Sedgwick County Board of Health.”

Reeser, who chairs the school board meetings, then gave the floor to Bond, who said she spent some of last week brushing up on the most recent science on masks.

“I, too, did a lot of my research during those snow days, and I also found that there’s no statistics to back up that masks are working,” Bond said. “But I am not anti-mask. I say if people want to wear it, wear it. I am anti-mandate.”

This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 9:18 PM.