"The Daily Show" takes on anti-mask parents 2:52
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When Perrysburg school superintendent Thomas Hosler sent a survey to parents in his Toledo-area district to see how many wanted to vaccinate their children against COVID-19, he received more than 20,000 negative responses. .
His district only has 5,700 students.
"It's clear that someone spent a lot of time in their basement working hard to invalidate our survey," Hosler said.
"That gives you an idea of how people are reacting to the decisions of the pandemic. This year, for our teachers especially, it feels much more stressful and it is only in November."
Questioning of district policy "has skyrocketed," he said, particularly on one issue: face masks.
Hosler's is one of 65% of Ohio's school districts that, according to the state department of education, have dropped mask-wearing mandates as cases have dropped significantly.
"No matter what decision we make, there is going to be a strong vocal backlash against it," Hosler said.
"It's kind of liberating in a way, because we're going to go ahead and make the best decision for the kids to keep them safe."
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Although studies show that masks at school work, whether a child has to wear a mask to school at this time of the covid-19 pandemic depends largely on where in the country they live.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines have not changed.
Due to the highly contagious delta variant, CDC guidelines recommend that everyone - students, staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools - wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status.
The American Academy of Pediatrics makes a similar recommendation.
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However, hundreds of districts across the country made the masks optional, according to an analysis of school records by CNN.
Masks are still required in states like Illinois, California, New York, and Washington.
The state of Washington even promised to withhold money from non-compliant districts.
In those states and many others, parents have organized large protests and sued districts over mandatory masks, leaving school principals with the difficult decision of how to keep children safe.
Some schools are repealing mask use mandates
Some, but not all, schools in Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio have made face masks in schools optional, often citing declines in COVID-19 cases.
In Texas, schools can't even require masks, although some districts, including Dallas, have bypassed the state and kept wearing mandates.
There is a federal investigation to determine if the Texas ban on mask mandates is affecting the rights of students with disabilities.
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In Perrysburg, Hosler said his district's mask policy has changed with the number of cases.
He started the year with a "highly recommended mask" policy because cases were low and the vaccination rate in the area was high.
Within three days of the new school year, there were indications that the district needed to do more.
"We saw this increase in cases and we saw it with the younger students, which we really hadn't seen the year before," Hosler said.
In the second week of school, he made masks a must.
A couple of weeks ago, when it seemed that the number of cases had decreased again, he made masks optional again.
He said his decision was helped by a change in October state policy that allowed children exposed to COVID-19 at school to stay in class if they were wearing a mask.
"That opened the door for children to stay in school," he said.
"So that's what led us to make the decision to make the mask optional."
Even with the optional mask policy, about 70% of his students still wear them, he said.
The numbers are lower among high school students.
"We are watching the cases closely," Hosler said.
"We have already made adjustments and are prepared to make another adjustment if necessary."
Every time the mask policy has been changed, he said, it has received both pushback and praise.
It is similar to when you make a decision about closing the school for a snow day.
"This kind of decision is like the one on steroids," Hosler said.
"No matter what decision we make, there is going to be a strong backlash and people are going to get angry."
"The Daily Show" takes on parents who are against masks in North Carolina schools
In Fulton County, Georgia's fourth-largest school district, Superintendent Mark Looney decided that masks could be optional if the district met one of the two benchmarks.
One is if the proportion of cases in a school is still less than 1% of enrolled students.
The second benchmark is 30 days after approval of vaccinations for children 5 years of age and older, regardless of student immunization status.
"We have learned a lot from covid management for almost two years," Looney said.
"The number of covid cases appears to have peaked and has been trending down since the beginning of September. We believe we have weathered most of the storm."
There is still the option to change the policy if conditions make it necessary, Looney said.
In Massachusetts, about 35 miles west of Boston, the Hopkinton High School Commission voted 3-2 to allow a three-week trial period by removing mask-wearing requirements for those students who were vaccinated.
Unvaccinated students still have to wear masks.
Since the school's vaccination rate is 80%, the district was allowed to make the change under Commonwealth policy.
This is a trial period for now.
The district is bringing the mandates back on November 22 in anticipation of Thanksgiving break and travel.
The board could also vote on the policy again if the cases increase.
So far, no new positive cases have been reported.
Some states maintain the obligation to use a mask
The state of Washington has maintained an obligation to wear masks in all schools, and any district that "deliberately" violates state health requirements risks losing state funding.
Washington Health Secretary Dr. Umair Shah said wearing masks is a critical piece of protecting children and keeping them in school when transmission in the community is still "higher than any of us would like. ".
"Masks work, in addition to other modalities," Shah said.
Masks, hand washing, vaccinations, and proper physical distancing can all serve to keep children in class.
"Children want to be close to others, and we have found that all these precautions must go hand in hand," he said.
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Shah said he knows these mitigating factors work because while schools have had some outbreaks, Washington has been "remarkably better" than comparable states in the country.
"We all recognize that we want to put this pandemic behind us," Shah said.
"But to keep them in school, it's really up to us to make sure that we have the maximum amount of precautions in place to help keep them safe and secure."
What science says
According to the CDC, when several layers of protection are applied - physical distance, hand washing, vaccines and masks - the transmission of COVID-19 is reduced.
Studies looking specifically at face masks show that outbreaks are much more likely in schools that do not require students and staff to wear masks, according to CDC studies from September.
A study conducted in Arizona showed that schools that did not require the use of masks were 3.5 times more likely to experience a COVID-19 outbreak than schools that required universal use of face masks.
A second CDC study showed that in counties in the United States where schools required the use of masks, there was less transmission of the virus in the community.
Another pre-printed study, meaning that it has not yet been peer-reviewed, showed that masks reduce transmission by about 50%.
The study was conducted predominantly in adults, said study co-author Joseph Lewnard, but said there are some lessons here that can be applied to children.
"We found that the benefits of wearing masks are greatest for people who are not yet fully vaccinated, and that is where most children are today," said Lewnard, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health. from the University of California at Berkeley.
According to the CDC, 87% of the US population lives in a county that currently has a high or significant level of transmission.
Cases are declining and more and more children are getting vaccinated, but until many more get vaccinated, Lewnard thinks face masks are a good idea.
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"The benefits of the use of masks could be greater among this population, in which a potentially volatile situation still exists if one takes into account that children, many of their interactions, actually occur with people their own age who are also not They are in the same place where the adults were last year before the vaccines, "he said.
Jump into the void?
Covid-19 cases have declined across the country, but cases among children are still considered "extremely high," according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
They constitute a disproportionate number of cases, about a quarter of all cases in the United States.
Children are still less likely to be hospitalized with covid-19 compared to adults and less likely to die, but long-term covid also occurs in around 4-6% of children.
Many of those cases were mild at first.
Additionally, Covid-19 can be deadly for children, even those without underlying health problems.
At least 897 children have died from COVID-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to the CDC.
Dr. Richina Bicette-McCain, associate medical director at Baylor College of Medicine, said she has watched the end of mandatory mask policies with concern.
"It definitely worries me. I think we're getting a bit too hasty," Bicette-McCain told CNN's Jake Tapper.
"We saw this happen in June, during the summer, when we declared that the pandemic had ended a little early. We decided that those vaccinated did not have to wear masks, which meant that everyone did not wear masks and subsequently , the peak and the delta wave occurred ".
Dr. Claudia Hoyen, director of pediatric infection control at UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, believes that since there is so much contact with children throughout the day, it probably makes sense to keep wearing masks.
"We know that indoor contact is the greatest risk," Hoyen said.
"Whether you are vaccinated or not, it doesn't mean you can't get infected."
Hoyen understands that most people do not like to wear a mask, but believes that children understand why they should.
"A lot of kids know that it's going to keep them safe and it's going to keep them in school and those are the things they really want," Hoyen said.
"You know, for a lot of kids, it's not a big problem."
Hoyen said that with the cold outside and people spending even more time indoors, it might be safer to keep mandatory masking in place until at least the end of the year.
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"Giving them consistency and expectations can be helpful," Hoyen said.
"The masks are working. People are doing well. You just have to keep going with them until it gets a little bit ahead."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who believes that masks have helped reduce cases at school, is confident that children don't have to wear them all the time.
"There is no question that masks make a difference," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN's New Day program.
"Vaccines are going to make a big, big difference. I think a combination of these things, hoping that at some point in the future, not only can we get the kids back to school, but we can get rid of the masking situation. We have to do it step by step. "
CNN's Mallory Simon contributed to this report.
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