As of today (Feb. 9), students, staff and visitors to Dunklin R-5 School District buildings no longer have to wear masks.
Dunklin officials notified families Tuesday (Feb. 8) about the change.
Superintendent Clint Freeman said school officials decided to make masks optional because the number of positive COVID-19 cases have decreased throughout the district.
As of Tuesday, three students and four staff members had tested positive for the virus, according to the Dunklin website.
The district’s mitigation plans says the superintendent, in consultation with the Board of Education, may modify the district's 2021-2022 COVID Response Plan based on metrics monitored by the district. Those metrics include positive student cases, student transmission rate within schools, community transmission rate and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance.
“All of the numbers are going down very quickly,” Freeman said today. “I had conversations with our board starting Monday to see if they would be comfortable with me exercising that modification to the plan (making masks optional). They all were fine with it because it made sense based on our data, numbers and the science behind it.”
Dunklin had started the school year Aug. 25 requiring everyone to wear a mask while walking through buildings and when at least 3 feet of separation was not possible, meaning students and staff did not have to wear masks when they had adequate spacing between each other while in classrooms or other areas.
On Dec. 21, the district’s Board of Education members voted that masks would be optional starting Jan. 4, but on Jan. 18, the board said masks would be required again starting Jan. 24 because of the high number of new cases.
From Jan. 19 through Jan. 21 students learned remotely from home because of a shortage of staff, and in-person instruction resumed Jan. 24.
Dunklin’s mask policy drew attention when a Herculaneum High School senior Tristan Watson protested the requirement and was sent home from school Jan. 28 for not wearing a mask. Watson, 18, was driven home by a Herculaneum Police officer Jan. 28 because the district’s school resource officer was not available to drive him home and no other transportation was available, the student and school officials said.
Watson protested the mask requirement by himself on Jan. 28, and he staged another protest Jan. 31 and was joined by about 12 adults and another 50 to 60 students along Joachim Avenue near Herculaneum High School.
Dunklin is one of 45 school districts the Missouri Attorney’s General Office filed a lawsuit against to end its mask mandate. Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, announced 36 of the lawsuits Jan. 21 and another nine lawsuits Jan. 24, and he sought temporary restraining orders to end mask mandates in the Columbia Public, St. Charles and Ferguson-Florissant school districts.
Dunklin was one of the first 36 districts Schmitt filed lawsuit against, and officials from the school district said on Facebook today that the district has not received any paperwork regarding the lawsuit.
Freeman said the decision to make masks optional was based slowly on the district’s COVID-19 numbers.
“We will keep revisiting it at each board meeting and try to make the best decisions we can for kids,” he said. “We want to keep our doors open and allow kids to have opportunities here at school, whether those are assemblies, basketball games and activities like a normal school year.”
Freeman said he is comfortable making masks optional at Dunklin right now.
“Our staff got hit hard, but they are back and working,” he said. “Our staff attendance is much better than it was, and our student attendance is a lot better than it was. I feel like, hopefully, we are on the other side of this Omicron virus and COVID in general.”