Staff and wire reports
Gov. Tom Wolf has asked state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, and House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, to call lawmakers back to Harrisburg immediately to work on a bill to order schools and child care facilities to require masks in classrooms.
Pennsylvania schools need a statewide requirement that students in classrooms wear masks as protection against the coronavirus, the Democratic governor wrote in a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders.
Concerned parents, pediatricians, teachers and others have been urging state officials for such a mandate, Wolf said.
Under a constitutional amendment that GOP lawmakers pushed onto the ballot earlier this year, which passed narrowly, the governor’s authority to respond to pandemics was severely curtailed.
In an interview Wednesday with the Mon Valley Independent, Sen. Pat Stefano, R-Bullskin Township, said he was in a caucus meeting when Wolf released his request for the legislature to return to Harrisburg to vote on making mask wearing mandatory in schools.
Stefano said the Republican caucus members discussed the issue and were united in their response.
“The answer is no. I can speak for the Senate, we are not going back to do his work,” Stefano said. “It’s always been my belief there will be no more mandates, especially from this legislature. These issues are supposed to be local based on local circumstances. We are not a one-size fits all state.”
Wolf’s letter said that at the end of July, just 59 of 474 school district plans submitted to the state Department of Education mandated mask wearing. Many school districts in the Mon Valley, including Belle Vernon Area, McKeesport Area, Ringgold, South Allegheny and Elizabeth Forward, have all approved health and safety plans that make masks optional in schools for students and staff.
Students at each of those schools are required to wear masks on school buses and other forms of school transportation, and each of those districts have said mask wearing is strongly encouraged.
The districts have each said they will follow CDC guidance and orders from the state if they are issued.
MASD said it is also in regular contact with Allegheny County Health Department.
One day after classes started at Ringgold, the middle school had to send home a letter alerting parents and guardians that people were inside the building with COVID-19. According to a letter sent Tuesday, two people have tested positive for COVID and were inside the school while they were contagious.
Students at Charleroi Area are required to wear masks as long as Washington County remains in the highest level of community transmission determined by the CDC.
The Monessen School Board in July approved a health and safety plan that requires all teachers, staff, students and visitors to wear masks indoors and on school buses — at least through Oct. 15. The safety plan applies to everyone regardless of vaccination status,.
As of Wednesday evening, all of the counties in the Mon Valley and southwestern Pennsylvania were in the CDC’s “high” level of community transmission.
Serra Catholic High School students and students at Mary of Nazareth Catholic School must wear masks as per a decision from the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Diocese said it will reevaluate the decision next month.
“It is clear that action is needed to ensure children are safe as they return to school,” Wolf said.
The governor told Cutler and Corman he has “become increasingly concerned about misinformation being spread to try to discredit a school district’s clear ability to implement masking” as well as “local control being usurped by the threat — implicit or explicit — of political consequences for making sound public health and education decisions.”
A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, said the House GOP caucus was against voting on a statewide mask mandate.
Pennsylvania voters narrowly approved a statewide referendum in May that curbed a governor’s emergency powers. The constitutional amendments were proposed by Republican lawmakers angry over Wolf’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, including his orders shuttering businesses, sending students home for online schooling and ordering masks worn outside the home.
But Wolf — who largely had lifted his orders before the referendum — has maintained that the referendum did not limit his authority to issue orders designed to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, such as shutdowns or masking restrictions. Those rest on separate public health law, his administration has said.
“My administration will continue to monitor the situation, communicate and work with the General Assembly and take actions as needed to keep our children safe, and in the classroom,” Wolf said in the letter.
Pennsylvania’s two statewide teachers unions last week urged K-12 schools to require masks in school buildings, citing the threat of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masks in schools for students, staff and teachers.
But masking has become a contentious and politicized issue, with heated debate taking place at the local level as school boards decide what their policy will be as schools reopen for the fall. Some Pennsylvania districts said they will require masks, including urban school districts in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Allentown and Bethlehem, but many others have decided to make them optional.
Other state lawmakers from the Mon Valley on Wednesday reacted to the governor’s request.
Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R, Carroll Township, calls the governor’s request another of his “tone-deaf measures.”
“It’s just absurd. He should know that, as Republicans, we feel that decisions should be made at the local level — in fact, should be made by parents,” Bartolotta said.
Bartolotta said mask-wearing impedes the ability of children to recognize facial expressions important to learning how to properly enunciate words and learn empathy by recognizing emotions through facial expressions. Bartolotta said extended mask wearing may also cause physical problems for young children.
“It’s been proven that children who are young and wearing masks for a long period of time become mouth-breathers. It’s a big deal because their muscles aren’t developed yet and they end up slack-jawed,” Bartolotta said.
State Rep. Bud Cook, R-West Pike Run Township, said the decision to wear masks should be made by parents who are equipped with information, not the governor or the legislature.
“Used to be “Hi, I’m here from the government to help you,’” Cook said. “Now it’s ‘Hi, I’m here from the governor to tell you what to do.’
“It’s a personal call for the parents.”
Cook said he will return to Harrisburg early if that’s what House leaders decided to do.
“I will always return to Harrisburg if called,” he said, adding that “it’s my duty to represent my constituents here in the 49th (District).”
Like Cook, state Rep. Eric Davanzo, R- South Huntingdon, doesn’t think the decision to wear a mask should be up to lawmakers.
“The kids aren’t getting sick and masks should be up to the parents,” he said. “Gov. Wolf dropped the ball on this. People are just frustrated by this. If it gets to where my daughter’s second grade class gets sick, I’d keep her home and go virtually.”
Davanzo said he does not expect the House to return to Harrisburg early
“We have no intention of mandating masks,” he said.
MVI staff writers Christine Haines and Jeff Stitt and the Associated Press contributed to this report.