The Little Rock School Board that sued the state for the right to require students and employees to wear masks followed through Thursday with an 8-0 vote for the masks to be worn inside school buildings and at indoor school functions.
The board approved the mask requirements at a meeting in which it approved the overall 2021-22 Ready for Learning Plan and the hiring of principals for Terry Elementary and the new Ignite Digital Academy for elementary students.
Exceptions to the indoor mask requirement will be allowed for eating, drinking and medical conditions. Students who have special needs necessitating an individualized education plan can be exempted. Those participating in indoor athletics -- such as volleyball -- will have to wear masks as they wait to play but not when actually playing, Deputy Superintendent Keith McGee said.
The district and board will evaluate the mask mandate -- intended to slow the spread of the covid-19 illness -- after 60 days.
School Board member Jeff Wood made a motion to amend the mask mandate decision to allow students and staff members the ability to remove their masks for "specific, momentary instructional needs." That motion, however, died for lack of a "second." A second is a parliamentary procedure that is required for a matter to proceed to a full vote of a governing body.
Board members had several questions about the enforcement of the mask requirement for students.
McGee, who chairs the district's Ready For Learning Plan committee and was acting in Superintendent Mike Poore's absence Thursday night, said that the failure to wear a mask in school would be treated as a violation of the district's dress code. Repeated violations would result in shifting a student to an online instructional program such as the district's new Ignite Digital Academies for elementary and secondary students, he said,
Suspension of a student for violating the mask requirement would be done only as a last resort, McGee said.
Board members pressed McGee to understand how the district will assign students who violate the mask mandate to the Ignite academies in light of data showing that the Ignite classes are currently filled to their state-approved maximums.
The elementary Ignite program has a 128-student waiting list, and the Ignite secondary program -- headquartered at West High School of Innovation -- has 74 on the waiting list.
McGee said district leaders are working to identify teachers currently assigned to in-school instruction for the Ignite academies to accommodate the student demand. He also suggested that the district is exploring the possible hiring of Arkansas-certified teachers employed by independent vendors to help with virtual instruction.
THE PLAN
The district's newly revised Ready For Learning plan includes not only the mask requirements but other guidelines for operating this school year in light of the covid-19 pandemic. Portions of the plan deal with who must be quarantined in the event of exposure to covid-19. Those who are vaccinated and do not have any symptoms of illness do not have to be quarantined, according to the plan, which is based on guidelines from the Arkansas Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[CORONAVIRUS: Click here for our complete coverage » arkansasonline.com/coronavirus]
Board member Ali Noland proposed that even the vaccinated be quarantined in the event of exposure as an extra measure of protection.
Board member Greg Adams warned that such a measure would be a disincentive to students to get covid vaccinations. He said that the vaccines are incentives for students who want to be in school and participate in activities without being quarantined. Adams asked that district administrators prepare recommendations on additional vaccination incentives to be offered to students.
The Little Rock district was a plaintiff in a Pulaski County Circuit Court lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 1002 of 2021. The law prohibited most but not all public agencies -- including public school systems -- from mandating that masks be worn.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox last week stopped the enforcement of Act 1002 until a full hearing is held and a final decision issued. In the past week dozens of Arkansas school boards have passed mask mandates for their students and employees in advance of Monday's start of classes for most students.
PRINCIPALS
The board approved the appointment of Millicent Sanders-Anderson to be the interim principal at the Ignite Digital Academy for elementary students and Holly Brown for the interim principal job at Terry Elementary.
The appointments were made just days before the start of the new school year Monday and after Stephanie Franklin resigned Tuesday from her positions as head of both Terry and the new Ignite Academy for elementary students.
The new online academy has attracted hundreds of families -- many of whom are anxious to keep their children out of traditional classrooms because of surging numbers of covid-19 cases.
Brown has been a district educator since 1997, most recently as an assistant principal at Fulbright Elementary. She is a former district teacher of the year.
Sanders has been a district employee since 2001 and has been working as an instructional technology facilitator since July for Ignite Digital Academy.
Previously, Sanders was the facilitator for the Environmental and Spatial Technology, or EAST, program at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and was a teacher at Henderson Middle School for 15 years before that.