BATON ROUGE, La. — The Louisiana chapter for the American Academy for Pediatrics says it strongly recommends that all students and school staff should wear face masks and maintain social distance, regardless of vaccination status.
In a letter to Gov. John Bel Edwards on Monday, the pediatric group is recommending universal masking while indoors because a significant portion of the student population is not eligible to receive a vaccination.
The Louisiana AAP adds that many schools do not have systems to monitor vaccine status for students or staff, which would make any policy based on vaccine status impractical.
“Masking provides the best protection of unvaccinated students and teachers from COVID-19 and reduces transmission,” the group wrote. “Universal masking is the best and most effective strategy to create consistent messages, expectations, enforcement, and compliance without an added burden upon our teachers.”
The letter comes just days after the St. Tammany School Board sent its own letter to the state’s Board of Secondary Education asking to allow employees, students and teachers the choice of whether or not to wear a mask. BESE had previously declined to enact statewide requirements, but Edwards later reinstated a statewide mask mandate which he said also applied to Louisiana schools.
Attorney General Jeff Landry later issued an opinion that BESE would have the final say on mask rules, despite Edwards’ order. Edwards said that Landry is “going out of his way to undermine public confidence in mitigation measures.”
“It is sad, it’s regrettable. It’s also irresponsible and it’s dangerous,” Edwards said.
BESE is expected to discuss the topic when it meets on Aug. 17.
Louisiana is struggling with the record-setting fourth surge of COVID-19 driven by the highly contagious delta variant and low vaccination rates. The state has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation and is seeing one of the country's worst COVID-19 spikes per capita.
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