Upper Dublin Schools Join Districts Mandating Masks in 2021-22

UPPER DUBLIN, PA — The Upper Dublin School District is going to be joining a growing number of districts across Montgomery County who are instituting mandatory mask-wearing for the coming school year due to rising COVID-19 numbers.

The district released its latest biweekly summer update on Thursday, and the word is that because the Upper Dublin community is now within what’s considered the “substantial” transmission range for the coronavirus, it will be instituting new measures for school students and staff.

In Upper Dublin, COVID-19 mitigation measures are tied to varying transmission levels – low, moderate, substantial and high – and once the community reached the substantial and/or high categories, the district would be implementing measures such as mandatory universal masking and limited visitor/volunteer access to school buildings.

The district plans to send out its next data update on Aug. 17.

The universal masking protocol is scheduled to go into effect on Aug. 25, according to the update released on Aug. 12 by Superintendent Steven Yanni. It covers students in all grade levels as well as staff. Mask-wearing will be mandated indoors only; for outdoors it is only recommended, according to the district’s current health and safety plan.

All students will also be required to wear masks while riding district transportation in accordance with federal regulations.

The Upper Dublin School District had been taking a tiered approach to indoor masking for the upcoming school year, one based upon where the community fell within the different transmission levels.

Once the community crossed into the ‘substantial’ and ‘high’ categories, masks would be mandated indoors for everyone. But in the ‘low’ and ‘moderate’ transmission levels, masking would be mandatory only for children in kindergarten through sixth grade, but only recommended for older students, given the age requirement for COVID-19 vaccinations.

At the state level, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has stopped short of issuing any blanket masking policy for commonwealth school districts, saying he would leave the issue of facemasks up to the individual communities.

Since infection rates had been rising as of late, many area school districts had been passing universal masking policies, an issue that has garnered both support, and opposition, from community members.

Many school boards have been meeting this summer to debate, and ultimately pass, school district health and safety plans tied to the coronavirus. Some have been holding special meetings each time administrators desired to revise the plans.

The Upper Dublin School District did things a little differently in that the original health and safety plan was written to be able to be changed without board approval, according to Yanni, the district superintendent.

The idea was that administrators would have the ability to revise the plan as necessary depending on any new recommendations that might come from local, state and/or federal health agencies.

"Revisions do not need to be board approved. The requirement from the state is that the original plan gets approved," Yanni said. "That said, I always check with the board to make sure there is support for any direction that we're going."

Yanni said the district tries to do everything in "lockstep" so that the administration and the board are always on the same page.

Longtime school board member Art Levinowitz said that there is definitely trust among the current board and district administration, saying that it is truly a team effort in Upper Dublin.