The U.S. politics of masks and pandemic mitigation returned with the new school year

Even though these campuses are the exception, as few schools require masks, lawmakers and presidential candidates have seized on the issue. A group of Senate Republicans unveiled legislation this week to prohibit federal mask mandates on domestic air travel, public transit and public schools through the end of 2024. On Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) shared a warning in response to the Maryland elementary school action: “If you want to voluntarily wear a mask, fine, but leave our kids the hell alone.” (The school, Rosemary Hills in Silver Spring, boosted security and kept recess indoors because of online backlash the same day.)

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, suggested in a Fox News interview Wednesday that mandated school mask-wearing is an attack on parental rights, and former president Donald Trump promised last month that, if reelected, he would “use every available authority to cut federal funding to any school” that imposed a mask rule.

School administrators say they are not eager to relive the bitter fights over masks and vaccination that dominated the first two years of the pandemic. Josh Tovar, a high school principal in Texas’s Garland Independent School District, said his campus is seeing a spike in student and staff infections that is depriving some classes of teachers. But, Tovar said, he would never consider requiring masks again, even if he had that power.

“There’s just a different mentality here in this state in regard to the mask,” he said. “I literally just left a principals’ meeting where we discussed seeing an uptick, but no one mentioned or thought to bring up requiring masks. It’s not on the radar.”

Others are taking half-measures. In Alabama, Talladega City Schools shared a short post in late August encouraging mask-wearing. But officials stopped short of a requirement, said Superintendent Quentin J. Lee, despite the surge of cases in his district and the emails from teachers concerned about infection. The Talladega Facebook post says: “Please note this is not a mask mandate.”

Lee said he wanted to tread carefully because “it’s a very polarized subject.” He still remembers politically and racially tinged complaints about mask-wearing from earlier in the pandemic.

Since the Facebook post went up, he said, “We’ve had mixed reviews. Some parents have been very appreciative and thankful. Some parents think that it’s a hoax and we shouldn’t be doing it — but that’s why we made it a suggestion.”

The moves toward mask-wearing come as virus rates in the United States are rising by multiple measures, although hospitalizations are far below where they were a year ago. It is difficult to tell how widespread mild cases are because at-home test results are not reported, and many people are not testing, since free tests are no longer widely available. Still, experts worry people are more susceptible to getting the virus in this latest uptick because most Americans have not received the latest booster — including 80 percent of school-age children — and the newest variants are adept at getting around immunity from vaccinations and prior infections.