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Across the Henrico County Public Schools division which serves nearly 49,000 students, only about one dozen families are refusing to follow the district's mask rules, citing the governor’s executive order.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order, which rescinded the K-12 mask mandate, took effect last Monday. Despite the order, HCPS maintained its masking requirements, citing a state law that requires schools to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the greatest extent practicable. The CDC recommends universal masking in K-12 schools.
Of the small group of families who are refusing to have their children wear masks, most are at Deep Run High School.
A group of 13 Deep Run students whose parents would not let them wear masks last week completed school work from the auditorium, according to students and teachers.
But starting Monday, the group of students were allowed in classrooms without masks.
In an email sent Friday afternoon only to teachers of those 13 students, school administrators wrote that the unmasked students are now allowed in classrooms and teachers should keep them either socially distanced or behind plexiglass if distancing isn’t possible.
In most classrooms, there isn’t enough room to space a student out six feet from classmates, said Rachel Lawrence, a Deep Run teacher.
“The general feeling from teachers is that this is going to be a slippery slope,” Lawrence said. “That once we have students not wearing masks, it will be hard to enforce the mask policy. How can you ask a student to wear a mask when someone else is not?”
In a faculty meeting on Monday morning, Deep Run teachers were instructed to send any students not wearing masks to the office – except for the original 13 students whose parents are refusing masks, according to teachers.
“To be clear, students cannot just come to school without a mask and sit in class,” said HCPS spokeswoman Eileen Cox.
Parents who are concerned about masking must talk with their principals, and following those conversations the vast majority of students wear their masks, according to Cox.
“...However, in cases where the parent refuses, we are leveraging the other mitigation measures available to us, including distancing, separation from peers by plexiglass, and learning asynchronously in an alternate location,” Cox said.
Katie Sullivan, a student at Deep Run, said that students are generally split on the mask issue – some feel safer with masks, some don’t like wearing them, and some don’t care either way.
But the conflict is “a distraction none of us need,” she said. “We’ve worn masks for half the year now, I think we can all survive and wear them for the rest of it.”
The 13 Deep Run students who are now allowed in classrooms maskless must put on their masks to go to the bathroom or change classes.
Last week, the students who were separated in the auditorium were allowed go to classes if they put on a mask. Lawrence, who is a math teacher, said one of her students was missing her classes but attending other classes.
“My concerns are that students broke a policy – whether you agree with it or not – and they're being allowed to basically continue to break that policy without any consequences," Lawrence said. “If we had more communication and more transparency, a lot of this could be avoided.”
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On Thursday evening, several HCPS parents spoke at a Henrico School Board meeting in support of parental choice for masking students.
Eleina Espigh, who said she’s the parent of a “political prisoner” at Deep Run, said her son has been “unjustly” quarantined.
“The people have elected a governor who would free us from this unjustified discrimination and tyranny,” Espigh said. “He's outlawed mask mandates, and yet HCPS continues to go rogue and make up rules that segregate, threaten, isolate and humiliate our children.”
Other parents called the mask rules heartbreaking, unethical and illegal.
The governor’s order doesn’t prevent school divisions from requiring masks, but it effectively gives parents the power to override them by electhing that their children not be subject to any mask mandate at their schools.
Another parent, Matt Williams, said that last year HCPS cited the former governor’s directive that required universal masking in schools.
“Now that our new governor has clearly written an executive order to give parents the choice in whether to mask children, the board now chooses to cite another law…” he said.
In their reasoning for keeping masking rules, HPCS officials have cited Senate Bill 1303, which requires schools to follow CDC guidance.
The law originally was introduced by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) as a one-sentence bill, mandating a return to in-person instruction. House Democrats added language onto the bill that requires schools to follow mitigation strategies from the CDC “to the maximum extent practicable.” It passed last year with a strong bipartisan vote.
The law stoked conflict in August after the CDC amended its guidance to urge masks for everyone in K-12 schools. But the conflict was nipped in the bud when then-State Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver released a health order mandating masks in K-12 schools, taking the authority out of the hands of local school boards.
When Youngkin rescinded the mask mandate, the conflict came back to life.
Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said in a call with reporters on Friday that the order jeopardizes the ability of schools to offer in-person instruction because masks are critical to keeping schools open.
“Gov. Younkin and Republican leaders have told Virginia that our school boards have failed our students, undermining these local officials, and he continues to repeatedly threaten that he will defund public schools that don't comply with his orders,” Swecker said. “All of this put together is pretty daggone straightforward — it's an attack on our public schools...”
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The biggest concern for Deep Run teachers, Lawrence said, is that there hasn’t been clear communication about policies and procedures for how to handle students who defy mask rules.
Leadership of the local teachers union, Henrico Education Association, encouraged teachers across HCPS to wear black on Monday to show solidarity with educators at Deep Run.
“This is a slap in the face to disabled and immunocompromised students whose families have worked tirelessly for years to attain medical documentation for their children’s accommodations,” said HEA President Patrick Miller in a statement. “We’re calling on HCPS to fix this egregious error, and to issue the same consequences they would if any other student broke any other rule.”
Of the approximately 12 families across the district who are refusing masks for their children, the majority are at Deep Run, according to Cox. By percentage, the Far West End school serves the fewest poor families (10%) out of any high school in the division, according to state data. Meanwhile, every high school in the East End of the county serves a majority of economically disadvantaged students.
The enforceability of Youngkin’s executive order likely will be decided in court. A group of parents filed a lawsuit against Youngkin in the Supreme Court of Virginia claiming that the order is unconstitutional. Seven Virginia school boards including Richmond also filed a joint lawsuit against Youngkin which claims that the governor cannot override the constitution of Virginia (which gives local school boards authority over school operations) and Senate Bill 1303.
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Anna Bryson is the Henrico Citizen's education reporter and a Report for America corps member. Make a tax-deductible donation to support her work, and RFA will match it dollar for dollar.
