Tuesday night, the Metro Nashville Public School board voted to remove the district’s mask mandate, effective after students return from spring break on March 21. The motion passed 7-1, with District 6 representative Fran Bush voting against it, saying she wanted to remove the mandate sooner. District 1 representative Sharon Gentry was absent from the meeting.
The decision comes amid a decline in Omicron-driven COVID-19 cases among students and staff, though director of schools Adrienne Battle noted that case counts are “still higher than at various points in the last semester.” The primary difference between this semester and last is that most school-age children can be vaccinated.
During the week of Feb. 14 to Feb. 20, 132 students and 46 staff members tested positive for COVID-19. Battle noted in her director’s report that nurses will no longer contact-trace individual COVID cases, but instead notify the entire classroom when there is an exposure — though individual contacts, she said, “may still be identified and notified under certain circumstances.”
Leading up to the board’s decision, parents gathered at the meeting, with some displaying signs in support of removing a mask mandate. During the COVID-19 portion of Battle's director’s report, some parents yelled at the board. Representative Christiane Buggs cleared the room, asking everyone to leave for a few minutes.
The discussion surrounding the mask mandate was heated, with raised voices, tears and interruptions from the crowd. Bush was the first to speak in the discussion, chastising other board members for COVID-19-related decisions they have made over the past two years and noting that she didn’t want to wait until March to remove the mask mandate.
District 8 representative Gini Pupo-Walker remained quiet throughout most of the conversation, but noted in announcements how difficult the past few years have been as a board member. “I get fucking $300 every [few] weeks for this job,” she said. “We are doing the best we can with the information we have for the students … and staff that we care about. I don’t have a personal agenda. My agenda is to help our [students] move forward. You can disagree with me, I can disagree with you, but you don’t have the right to menace and threaten students up here and ... Adrienne Battle, and think that that is somehow going to persuade us to vote differently. Quite the contrary, right? I'm emotional because it's really hard to do this job.”
District 3 representative Emily Masters said she has gotten mixed reactions from her constituents, while District 7 representative Freda Player-Peters noted that she has a diverse constituency with some families living in multigenerational households who would prefer a mask mandate for “safety reasons.”
“The transition, I think, is a fair compromise,” said Player-Peters. “The fact that we can continue this [mandate], to make sure that we have continued this downward trend until after the spring break. I think that's a fair compromise. I think it’s [one thing] of making sure there's time for people to settle and make accommodations as they see fit.”
