BESE meets Wednesday morning and looks set to consider whether or not to accept the Governor’s statewide mask mandate for K-12 schools.
The decision comes amidst protests at local school boards over the mandate and a letter signed by 63 House Republicans asking BESE to reject the Governor’s mandate and allow school boards to make the decision locally.
“It is BESE’s constitutional obligation to make those kinds of determinations when it comes to our students,” said Alexandria Representative Lance Harris, who was among the signatories.
Harris said the Governor doesn’t have unilateral authority to make this call for K-12 schools, and we’ve learned enough about COVID over the last year to allow local school boards to make their own call on masking.
“Quite frankly I think that a lot of these decisions should involve the locals over whether or not these masks should be required, or to what extent they go,” said Harris.
Governor Edwards insisted his statewide mask mandate does apply to schools and can’t be overridden. He cited precedent established over the past year and a half that supports his claim and notes Louisiana is currently in the middle of the worst ever COVID surge.
“If we want our kids to stay safe and our schools to stay open the only way to do that when we have this much transmission of COVID in a community is with a mask mandate,” said Edwards who added the school mask mandate is not just about protecting kids.
“They go home at the end of the day and if they have COVID then they are going to be spreading it to mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa and transmission in this state is already too high, that’s why we see hospitals losing capacity,” said Edwards.
New Orleans data analyst Jeff Asher noted that kids aged 5-17 made up the single largest number of new cases of any age group Tuesday.