Methacton School Board Approves Universal Masking For Everyone

LOWER PROVIDENCE, PA — Methacton school directors heeded the recommendations of district administrators on Wednesday and voted to make mask-wearing mandatory at school buildings during the 2021-22 school year.

The move falls in line with what many other Montgomery County districts are doing in light of rising coronavirus numbers being primarily blamed on a variant strain of the virus.

On Wednesday, Superintendent David Zerbe posted a letter to the community on the district’s website alerting parents of the change from optional masking – which was the initial protocol in the district’s draft health and safety plan – to mandatory masking for all students and staff.

Zerbe wrote that this spring, he and many other superintendents from districts all across Montgomery County had believed that the 2021-22 school year could start without the required wearing of masks, since COVID-19 numbers had been steadily declining.

As recently as last month’s Methacton School Board meeting, administrators believed that optional masking could be possible, with that plan being presented at the July 27 board meeting, Zerbe wrote to parents.

But things changed when just four hours prior to the July 27 meeting, the U.S. CDC came out and revised recommendations, now urging everyone in schools, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks during the upcoming school year to mitigate against COVID-19 transmission.

Two days later, Montgomery County health officials revised their guidance to also recommend universal mask-wearing in schools.

“As you can imagine, the CDC-revised recommendations, so close to the start of the school year, make things challenging,” Zerbe wrote in his letter. “However, a closer look at their rationale for these changes involves the proliferation and behavior of the COVID Delta variant that makes vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals susceptible, and where the healthcare experts have concluded that masking and distancing in schools is still the most appropriate mitigation strategy.”

Zerbe stated that the school board understood all these changes and agreed that the best strategy moving forward to protect against continued COVID-19 infection rates was to approve the health and safety plan containing the universal masking provision, which will begin effective Aug. 16.

A copy of the latest version of Methacton’s health and safety plan, the one containing the universal mask provision, can be found here.