It’s been quite a battle over masks the past several months here in South Carolina. I won’t go in to all the details but the main reason elementary and secondary school children are not masked is because there was a stipulation put in to the budget for this year that stated schools could not mandate masks.
As you could expect, they have been trying to work around it. The Department of Education has been and continues to be huge proponents of masking our children. They forced the issue with transportation requiring all students be masked. Now an Obama judge, Mary Geiger Lewis, who happens to be a Clemson grad and a Univ. of South Carolina law student, sided with the parents of immunocompromised children in a suit they brought forward with the help of the ACLU. By siding with these children, this opens the door to mask mandates being forced on several hundred thousand school children across the state. Greenville County Schools alone has more than 70,000 students. State Superintendent of Schools, Molly Spearman, is wasting no time telling schools that they MUST revise their mask policies if they had relied upon the excuse to not mask due to SC law since that law has been stuck down. They must come up with another reason why they aren’t requiring masks because they are out of line with the CDC which means they are out of line with SC DHEC and the expectations from the Department of Education….all this means is that we will likely see a lot of mask mandates in short order for our students.
I don’t have the details but I believe Attorney General Alan Wilson is challenging this ruling as might be a few of our state representatives. Here’s the memo Spearman sent to all school districts yesterday.
Meanwhile, it’s Wednesday afternoon and I fully expect we’ll have some school districts issuing mask mandates before the weekend.
Well, here we go…the crazies in Columbia, SC are hell bent on continuing with the fear propaganda. Remember we have a Republican Governor here in South Carolina by the name of Henry McMaster. If you’re looking at moving to SC because you are escaping a blue state, I’d give McMaster a C+ to B- grade. He is not DeSantis. His State Superintendant of Education is Molly Spearman. She just issued a mask mandate requiring all students and staff on any and all state-owned school buses. I don’t know how many state-owned buses Greenville County School uses but I will find out soon I’m sure and will update this post.
NOTE: “buses will be equipped with a supply of face coverings that meet CDC Order requirements. If a student boards without a face covering, drivers will offer the student a face covering. However, no student should be denied transportation for failing to adhere to the CDC Order.
I don’t know if there will be many students with the courage to get on those buses without a mask but according to Molly Spearman, they must be allowed to get on the bus even if their faces are not covered with a MASK!