Council Rock To Review Mask-Optional Policy After New Guidance

NEWTOWN, PA — The Council Rock school board is set to consider whether to alter its health and safety plan for the coming school year after the Bucks County Health Department issued new guidance urging schools to require students and staff to wear masks inside.

The board scheduled a special meeting for 7 p.m. Aug 26 to review the county’s new COVID-19 guidance for schools and decide whether to change its mask-optional policy.

“The primary purpose of this special board meeting will be to discuss how the latest guidance from BCHD might impact the CRSD Health and Safety Plan, and then vote accordingly,” Superintendent Robert Fraser said Wednesday in an email to community members.

As recently as last week, the health department and its director, David Damsker, were advocating for school districts to adopt mask-optional policies and form their own safety plans amid the ongoing pandemic.

The health department issued a memo Sunday attempting to address criticism of its guidance to schools, saying the recommendations were based on “science, years of public health policy, 18 months of accumulated local experience with the pandemic, and common sense.”

Two days later, however, Damsker and the health department issued new guidance calling for Bucks County districts to adopt mask mandates for the start of the new school year, after local hospital representatives voiced concerns about their “limited ability to treat severe pediatric cases of any type.”

Masking in schools “is particularly important for students who are unvaccinated, which includes all students under 12,” Damsker said, urging all eligible residents “in the strongest possible sense" to get vaccinated.

Fraser has voiced support for Damsker and his health recommendations throughout the pandemic and said Wednesday that he will continue to trust his guidance.

Damsker has faced criticism this week after he told a Bucks County school leader to have students’ parents not report known coronavirus cases to the school’s day care facility.

Kathryn Strouse, director of the Middle Bucks Institute for Technology, emailed Damsker in July, asking him to clarify differences between the county’s guidance to schools and that of state and federal health agencies.

“One easy way of handling this is not to have your parents report any COVID to you, any more than they would report influenza to you. That way you won’t know,” Damsker wrote in response. “If a kid is sick normally, you don’t ask why they are sick….”

Day care facilities in Pennsylvania must follow guidelines from the Office of Child Development and Early Learning, which requires them to report known cases to their county health department.

The Council Rock School District’s mask-optional policy has been the source of increasingly intense debate since the end of the 2020-21 school year.

Dozens of parents and community members spoke at the school board’s Aug. 5 meeting, with many calling for universal masking and many voicing support for the district's mask-optional policy.

The author of one petition presented the board with more than 430 signatures in support of a mask mandate at Council Rock schools, while the author of a counter petition told the board she had collected more than 650 in the previous 24 hours.

Students in the Council Rock School District are set to return to class on Aug. 30.