Lower Moreland Will Not Mandate Masks In Schools After Tense Community Meeting
LOWER MORELAND TOWNSHIP, Pa. (CBS) -- Things got tense Monday night during a school board meeting in Montgomery County over one district's decision to keep its mask mandate in place while others merely recommended to mask up.
Starting Tuesday, Lower Moreland will join other schools and strongly recommend masks instead of mandating them.
There was an emergency meeting Monday night to address and amend the district's health and safety plan, which required masks in the classrooms after there was major backlash.
This all started after the CDC bumped Montgomery County into a high COVID community level.
This prompted many school districts, including Lower Moreland, to quickly bring back the mask mandate in schools.
While the majority of neighboring schools quickly rescinded that requirement, citing clarification from the CDC, Lower Moreland chose to keep it.
Parents for and against masks spoke Monday night.
"They made the right decision, I'm glad they did. It was the only decision. They woke us up, they woke me up. We gotta get more involved with the school, what they try doing, what they have been doing. They tried overstepping, the parents came together, community came together, we won," a man said.
"It's causing such a divide between the neighbors and families. You're either one side or the other and it's affecting our children at this point. And it's really sad. We were starting to come back together," a woman said.
Enforcement also came into play when making this decision. Many parents said they planned to send their kids to school without masks anyway. This decision comes with only 14 days left of school.