Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced Tuesday that masks will be required in all state K-12 schools and child care facilities beginning on Sept. 7.
The move comes just days after the Republican-led Legislature rejected his call to pass one through legislation.
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“This is a necessary step to keep our students and teachers safe and in the classroom where they all need to be and where we want them all to be,” he said during an afternoon press conference in Harrisburg. “Doing nothing right now to stop COVID-19, that’s just not an option.”
He also said that doing nothing would “mean more sick kids.”
“It’s going to mean more days out of school,” he added. “It’s going to mean more grief for our communities and more problems for our economy.”
The mandate is a reversal for the Wolf administration, which had previously said it would leave mask policies up to individual districts. Wolf said Tuesday that misinformation about masks was “pressuring and intimidating school districts to reject mask policies.”
He also noted that concerned parents had flooded his office with telephone calls and email messages, concerned about the safety of their children in school.
The state’s two teachers unions had urged K-12 schools to require masks in buildings, citing the fast-moving, more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended masks in schools for students, teachers, and staff.
Wolf’s directive followed a statewide resurgence of coronavirus. Pennsylvania is averaging more than 3,200 confirmed daily infections, which is 20 times the number in early July.
More than 1,700 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state, a sevenfold increase from last month. Deaths in Pennsylvania have doubled in two weeks to 20 per day.
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Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam pointed to a 277% rise in coronavirus cases among Pennsylvania’s children 17 and under between mid-July and August. She said that more than 5,000 students had already tested positive for the virus in the first few days of the new school year.
Last week, four high school football games had to be canceled due to outbreaks.
State Republican House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff spoke out against the mandate and said the GOP was considering legal action. He also called the decision to make students mask up “ill-advised” and said it “deprives Pennsylvania communities of local control and community self-determination in public health decisions.”
