LOXLEY – Baldwin County students and educators will be required to wear masks on campuses and in buses at least until September, following a vote by the Baldwin County Board of Education.

After more than two hours of discussion and hearing from supporters and opponents, the board voted 5-1 with one abstention to support the order by Superintendent Eddie Tyler that masks will be required. The special meeting of the board was held in the Central Annex building in Loxley.

Tyler said masks are a way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and to keep schools open during the pandemic.

“Our reasoning is simple. I don’t want to close schools,” Tyler said. “I think keeping our schools open is critical for our families and our community. When we started our opening at the end of July, we saw dramatic absences from COVID among our employees. I was very concerned about being able to staff our buildings because if we lose a significant amount of staff, we would need to close and that would be devastating.”

The school system had relaxed the requirement for masks in the spring of 2020. Tyler said in July that masks would not be required when schools reopened in August, but then ruled that face coverings would be mandatory.

During the meeting, several doctors and nurses said COVID-19 cases have greatly increased in recent weeks.

“Today at Children’s and Women’s Hospital, we’ve got 20 children in the hospital sick with COVID-19, seven in intensive care, three are on a ventilator,” Dr. David Gremse, chairman of pediatrics at the University of South Alabama Medical System, said. “This is more cases than we saw in 2020. This current strain of the virus is infecting children more than the strain of the virus that was circulating in 2020. In fact, in the past six weeks, we have admitted more children to the hospital, than we did the entire previous 11 months.”

He said masks are one way to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

“The mask by itself is not going to guarantee that you’re not going to get infected with COVID-19, but as a community, if the children in schools wear the masks, it reduces the chances of spreading it,” Gremse said. “There’re fewer children that will get infected overall.”

Dr. Haidee Custodio, a pediatric and infectious disease physician, at USA, said Children’s and Women’s had about 500 pediatric COVID cases in the year from March 2020 to March 2021. In the first week of August, 125 children were admitted with COVID.

“There’s nothing more difficult, every time I go into a room, when I see a child with a tube down their throat, hooked up to a ventilator with a mother or father looking at their child wondering what else they can do to help their child,” she said. “It’s not very easy dealing with that every day.”

Many audience members, however, said a mask mandate is not the best way to fight COVID-19.

Demetrius Cox said hand washing and cleaning schools thoroughly have been shown to be better deterrents to the virus than requiring children to wear masks.

“Additional strong evidence against mask mandates arrives in the form of 60-days worth of data from April and May 2021 from Baldwin County Public Schools and other school districts statewide where absenteeism and positive COVID test rates did not increase when the 2020 mask mandate was canceled in March 2021,” Cox said.

He said no children have died in Baldwin County as a result of COVID-19 and that studies in other countries, such as Sweden and Ireland, have found that the virus is not spread more rapidly when face coverings are not required.

“Clearly Baldwin County is not in a public health crisis over COVID,” Cox said. “A child is more likely to be struck by a falling rock from outer space than to die from COVID or even to hospitalized, so please do not be fooled by politicized infection or transmission curves currently in vogue. High transmission does not equal high lethality as evidenced by the common cold and seasonal flu.”

Parent Eric Whitlow said children gather without masks when they are not in school and requiring masks during a certain time of the day does not reduce the chances of them spreading COVID-19.

“Mask mandates in schools do not work,” he said. “Our kids enjoy youth group activities in church. They practice in sporting events. They attend karate. They do neighborhood whiffle ball tournaments with friends. All of this while not wearing masks. But we send them to school for an eight-hour, very confined, controlled day and force them to wear a mask. This doesn’t pass the common-sense test.”

Dr. Eric Shrubbe, a Baldwin County doctor, said masks do help prevent the spread of the virus.

“We see a lot of COVID patients,” Shrubbe said. “We’re seeing more and more children every day with COVID and I’ll just tell you what I think works. I think two things work. I think vaccinations work and I think masks work.”

Deborah Ristaneo, a mental health nurse, said a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that wearing masks increased anxiety in children. She said that suicides and other mental health issues among young people have increased since the beginning of the pandemic.

“While we do have a vaccine for COVID, we do not have a vaccine for the trauma, for the anxiety, for suicide, for a lot of the mental health issues that children are currently experiencing right now because of COVID,” she said.

After hearing from more than 30 speakers, the board voted to support Tyler’s decision.

Member Tony Myrick voted against the decision. He said he disagreed about the effectiveness of masks, but that he would support any decision by the majority of the board. Myrick said that Tyler has the authority to issue the order and that he did not feel the board needed to vote on the issue.

Board Member Robert Stuart abstained from the vote. He also said the board did not need to vote on a decision by Tyler.