ALLEN COUNTY, Ind. (Fort Wayne's NBC) - Significant policy change proposals were set to be presented to board members from two Allen County public school corporations on Tuesday that would require students, staff and teachers to wear face coverings inside their district buildings.
Mask mandates have already been enacted by Fort Wayne Community Schools and Northwest Allen County Schools, and administrators in both cases say they are getting very little "push back" from students or adults impacted by the changes.
Northwest Allen just approved a masking requirement in the middle of last week.
Administrators with NACS say they've had a very small number of students and employees unwilling to abide by the new face covering protocols, claiming child withdrawals from school were a fraction of one percent of the district's overall student population.
FWCS put its mask mandate in force before classes started in August.
Public Information Officer Krista Stockman says only a handful of school system employees turned in their resignations when the mask requirement kicked in.
"It wasn't ever that we said to anybody you either do this or you lose your job, we did hear of some individual cases where some people decided that they didn't want to do it and so they were going to seek other employment," Stockman said.
She says some families did scramble to get their children moved into the district's virtual learning academy following the policy revision.
Stockman did not know if some families were turned away because of limited space in that program.
We're told there has been some spread of COVID-19 illness in the district's 50 schools despite the mask policy, but most of that is believed to be taking place during lunch-time and during extra-curricular activities such as football and marching band when kids don't have to wear face coverings.
School leaders aren't apologizing for the decision to say masks are a must in the current environment.
"The kids were used to it last year, a year is a long time when you're a kid, so I think its become a habit for them. So I think our parents are happy with our decision and we've heard a lot of good feedback and we've been thanked a lot from parents," said FWCS Board President Anne Duff.
Erendira Sanchez, who has a pre-K student and 2nd grader in Fort Wayne Community Schools, is generally supportive of the mask requirement, but she also believes it will take some time to determine if the masks prove to be a roadblock in any way to good learning outcomes in classrooms.
The Link LonkSeptember 08, 2021 at 06:32AM
https://fortwaynesnbc.com/2021/09/07/nacs-fwcs-leaders-say-mask-wearing-mandates-in-schools-are-meeting-little-resistance/
NACS, FWCS leaders say mask wearing mandates in schools are meeting little resistance - Fort Wayne's NBC
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