CALDWELL COUNTY, N.C. — In the last few days, several North Carolina school districts have either discussed or made changes surrounding COVID-19 policies in schools.
Most recently both Cabbarus County and Caldwell County Schools voted to make masks optional in schools this week.
This all comes as major changes were made to the North Carolina Strong Schools Toolkit on Thursday.
The most impactful changes surround contact tracing and quarantines.
The state is no longer recommending the contact tracing of individual cases. Also, students or staff exposed to COVID-19 no longer need to stay home before returning to school as long as they don’t have symptoms.
The Union County Public School Board of Education voted almost two weeks ago to end contacting tracing and quarantine requirements for students and staff.
Back in September, it voted to stop requiring staff to handle contact tracing and quarantine operations for any asymptomatic or non-positive students and staff.
After Thursday’s update to the strong school’s toolkit other districts will start falling in line with what this district has been doing for a while.
In a unanimous vote Friday morning, the Caldwell County School Board dropped its mandatory mask mandate.
Board members said they were able to make masks optional because the state is no longer recommending that students or staff exposed to COVID-19 stay home before returning to school.
Caldwell County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps said since Jan 4. students missed 14,167 days of instruction due to being quarantined. Teachers missed 1,414 workdays.
"That's been a concern of ours because we knew that a lot of the folks out on quarantine never developed symptoms," Phipps said.
Before the changes to state guidance, people with asymptomatic cases previously had to quarantine at home for days after a possible exposure.
State guidance has not changed on recommending masks in schools.
Some parents in mask-optional schools are cautioning against haste to drop mask requirements. Jodi McConkey has a child at UCPS, is a former teacher, and is running to be on the school board.
“With our current situation, we could not be looked at as the example," McConkey said. "Because we haven't had any data whatsoever to compare how we could have done had we worn masks. And that's and that's very, very sad.”
McConkey looks to the neighboring school district Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools as a district that's being patient with changes to COVID-19 precautions.
“They've been very careful about making their decisions and their kids have been in masks," she said. "And so they have so much more accurate data as to how their schools are doing and how their county is doing.”
Caldwell County leaders say going masks-optional does not mean safety is out the window.
“If your kid is sick or showing symptoms, and you still send them to school, you know, that's just increasing the spread of COVID, it's going to cause problems," Caldwell Count Schools Board Member Chris Becker said.
Union County currently has a positivity rate of 27.6% Mecklenburg County has a positivity rate of 18.5%. Caldwell County has a positivity rate of 26.6%. North Carolina has a positivity rate of 15.4%.
The CDC suggests masking in schools in communities where the percent positivity rate is over 8%.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.