The Jefferson County Board of Education voted 4-3 on Tuesday night to reduce the need for masks and bring protocols in line with new federal and state health guidance.
The proposal, brought in by District 3 board member James Craig, allows Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Marty Polio to make masks optional when the county is in CDC's green or yellow zones. Masks will be mandatory for students and staff when the county is in the Red Zone.
Jefferson County is currently in the yellow zone, but Polio said the mandate would remain in effect for Wednesday and that he would send information to families soon.
His new right expires on June 30. At that time, the board will re-evaluate the situation in the district and the pandemic.
"It is my firm belief that the Board follows public health guidance," Craig said. "It helps the board maintain legitimacy in the way it makes its decisions."
"There are certainly times when we need to defer to specialists," said District 7 board member Sarah Cole McIntosh. He voted in favor of the new mask policy. So did District 5 member Linda Duncan. He pointed to the low positivity rate of students in the district.
According to district staff, out of 21,202 students tested in the last week of February, only 163 tested positive.
But not all members agreed with the decision to relax the mask mandate.
"I still think caution is the way we should go," said District 2 board member Chris Kolb.
"Not having a mask mandate is just flat-out discrimination against vulnerable children," Kolb said, pointing to a lawsuit the ACLU filed in Virginia over a governor's executive order banning the mask mandate.
The discussion came hours after the Kentucky House of Representatives passed its measure to ban the mask mandate, which has yet to be heard in the Senate.
Kolb, along with District 6 board member Corey Schul and board president and District 1 member Diane Porter, voted against relaxing the JCPS's mask mandate.
In January Kolb, Porter and Schul were among the majority of members who voted on the CDC's recommendation for polio to adopt a new shorter quarantine and isolation period.
Schul did not comment ahead of the vote. Instead he asked District Health Manager Eva Stone what the JCPS's student vaccination rate was. The answer was 32%.
District 4 member Joe Marshall voted with a majority in January against relaxing quarantine and isolation. But on Tuesday, they voted to adopt the CDC's new less-restrictive mask requirements.
"We're one of the last to hold the wall, and we've put up a good fight," Marshall said. But, he added, "I think there comes a time where we have to celebrate, you know, where we are and give an opportunity to learn this new way of doing what's normal."
He said that families have the resources and information they need to protect themselves.
In late February, the CDC relaxed its guidance about masking, recommending that masking decisions be made based on the level of spread and the availability of hospital beds at the county level. The Kentucky Department of Public Health (KDPH) updated its guidance on March 4.
Latest Guidance on Masking
The latest CDC guidance divides counties into risk categories based on new criteria: low, medium and high. CDC recommends universal masking in schools only for counties in the high-risk category. However KDPH's guidance states that counties in the moderate-risk category may "consider" universal masking in schools.
Current CDC charts show Jefferson County in the moderate-risk category, along with most of the western part of the state. Much of the eastern part of the state, Oldham County and some western Kentucky counties remain at high risk.