As students prepared to head back to the classroom in Virginia, two state senators sent a letter to school leaders around the state this month saying that schools have the power to make their own decisions about pandemic safety measures, contradicting the Northam administration’s statewide order requiring masks to be worn indoors in K-12 schools.

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       Sens. Siobhan S. Dunnavant (R-Henrico) and Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City) sent the letter on Aug. 18 to superintendents and school boards in response to a mask mandate Northam (D) announced the week before requiring masks in all K-12 schools. Dunnavant and Petersen argued that a law the two had sponsored earlier this year had been misrepresented by Northam to provide the basis for the mandate.

       The bipartisan law, SB 1303, required schools to open to in-person instruction, and included a provision stating that schools would have to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines in their reopening plans “to the maximum extent practicable.”

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       While the CDC had previously said that vaccinated people did not need to wear masks inside buildings, the agency updated its guidance on July 27, recommending that everyone over the age of 2 wear masks inside school buildings, regardless of their vaccination status. Northam administration pointed to SB 1303 when announcing the mask mandate, which was issued by the state health commissioner Aug. 12.

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       Many school districts around the state and region had already decided to require masks indoors when the state’s mandate was issued, but some reversed their original decision to make masking optional in compliance with the new order.

       Dunnavant and Petersen said the bill was never intended to require masks in schools, but rather was designed to reopen schools in-person and give the schools power to decide what covid-19 mitigation efforts they wanted in accordance with CDC guidance.

       “The purpose was to reopen schools and to give maximum flexibility to the schools,” Petersen said in an interview. “Not to enable people in Richmond to tell the school divisions what to do.”

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       Petersen said the intention of their letter was not to confuse the school districts, but inform them of what he said was their ability to make their own decisions. He said there is no legal obligation for schools to follow the mask mandate since the state is no longer under a state of emergency.

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       The governor’s office had no comment on the senators’ letter, their position, or whether school districts could opt out of the mandate, as Petersen said. The health commissioner’s order cites the law, but does not mention any penalty for noncompliance.

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       The debate over masks in schools has become a political battleground in divided Virginia, which was long a Republican stronghold that turned purple and is now controlled by Democrats. School leaders across the country have made back-to-school decisions in the midst of increasing coronavirus cases and concern about the highly contagious delta variant, which poses extra risk in school settings since vaccine doses are not available for children younger than 12. In Virginia, the seven-day average of new cases was up 22 percent from last week, and up more than tenfold since the end of June.

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       Some school leaders say they feel like they’ve been caught in the middle of the debate, and the letter contradicting the health commissioner’s order was more confusing than helpful as they prepared for the start of school. Schools around the state have their first day back scheduled this month, with many starting this week and next.

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       Falls Church City Public Schools Superintendent Peter Noonan said that the letter coming directly after the mandate seemed to undermine the efforts of the state to implement safe procedures for students returning to the classroom.

       He sent an email to the senators asking for clarification.

       “Are you suggesting that the School Board can ignore the recent State Order requiring masks without concern for their legal jeopardy?” Noonan wrote. “It seems to me that the appropriate clarification would be to follow the Guidance of the CDC and to follow the law of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

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       Peterson responded with an email stating: “Last week Senate Bill 1303 was misrepresented as ‘mandating’ masks in public school. Of course, it does not do that. It gives school divisions the flexibility to choose ‘applicable mitigation strategies’ as outlined by the CDC — nothing is mandated. The choice is yours, just as the building belongs to the local School Board (not the Governor), per the VA Constitution, and conduct w/in the building is under your Board’s control.”

       “It was unhelpful in the moment,” Noonan said of the senators’ letter. “We have two state leaders that are sending information that contradicts what the state health commissioner is saying.”