Board votes to lift mask requirement in May

After months of debate, Libby Public School Board members voted in favor of lifting the district’s mask requirement early next month.

Though wearing masks will become optional on school grounds as of May 3, face coverings will still be mandatory in classrooms with students and staff who are especially susceptible to the virus.

Superintendent Ron Goodman reserves the ability to reinstate the requirement if the coronavirus begins spreading through schools or a large number of cases of unconfirmed origin crop up locally.

The decision came during an April 12 school board meeting. A week prior, administrators at Troy Public Schools announced that the Troy Public School Board had lifted its mask requirement. As of April 5, wearing masks in school facilities became optional in Troy.

During the April 12 meeting, Libby Public School Board members debated the merits of three policy options as classes wind down. The first would have required students and staff to wear face coverings until the end of the school year. The second, which board members approved with edits, would lift the requirement on May 3 but would allow Goodman to reinstate masks if Libby saw more than 10 cases of unknown origin. The third option would have lifted the requirement as of April 13.

Board member Bgee Zimmerman said the three policies sprung out of conversations she had with colleague Sam Rosling and attorney Kris Goss of the Montana School Board Association.

After Zimmerman presented the policies, Rosling made a motion to approve the third option. Alida Leigh provided a second.

Leigh voiced support for the policy, saying that all staff and students who are especially vulnerable to the virus should have already been vaccinated by April 13. Goodman said he suspected that was true, but could not confirm it as the district does not track that information.

A group of school administrators and county health department officials previously recommended that the district lift its mask requirement after April 29. By that date, anyone who wished to be vaccinated would have received their doses.

Libby Elementary School Principal Andrew Stiger agreed that the board should eventually lift the requirement, but was unsure if his staff would be prepared for the change the following day.

Rosling said he hoped that it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the district was planning to lift face covering requirements. Board members had been talking about mask policies for months, he said.

But Ruth Vanworth-Rogers, principal of Libby Middle High School, echoed Stiger’s concern. She described past board discussions as focused on lifting the requirement toward the end of April.

“I don’t think I could prepare teachers for tomorrow,” said Vanworth-Rogers.

Board member Jeff Stevenson also expressed surprise at the prospect of immediately lifting the requirement.

Rosling’s motion was defeated in a 4-3 vote. Rosling, Leigh and George Woodruff cast the assenting votes. Board Chair Ellen Johnston broke the tie by siding with members Lori Benson, Zimmerman and Stevenson against the motion.

Zimmerman then made a motion to adopt the second policy option. Benson offered a second.

Rosling and Leigh noted that if the board were to accept the second option as presented, the district could find itself alternating between lifting and imposing masks requirements as case counts fluctuate.

“I don’t want to get to May 3 and be at 16 [cases] and be like, ‘Never mind, we were just kidding,” said Leigh.

Goodman said the 10 case count was meant to serve as more of an indicator rather than a threshold for reinstating the mask requirement. The superintendent said he would consider cases of unknown origins or those that could be tied to the spread of the virus within schools as more serious than those that county health department officials could trace to spread within the community.

“To put it simply, when it rains we need to wear a raincoat and when it's not raining we shouldn’t wear a raincoat,” he said.

If school board members were to lift the requirement without a contingency plan that would allow administrators to quickly reinstate masks, Goodman worried that it could take days for the board to reconvene and update the policy.

Goodman later struck the case count indicator of 10 from the policy but said in a follow-up interview that he could still reinstate the requirement if he deemed it necessary.

Zimmerman’s motion passed with only Rosling voting against it.

Goodman applauded the policy, calling it a great step forward. While districts across the country are still struggling to reopen their doors to students and staff, he noted that Libby Public Schools have offered classroom-based instruction throughout the academic year with few interruptions.

“How many schools across this nation had in-person instruction and then were able to move out of masks by the end of the year?” he asked.