Masks To Remain Optional in Union County Public Schools

MONROE, N.C. – By a 5-4 vote, masks will remain optional in Union County Public Schools.

Hundreds of pro and anti mask parents rallied before the meeting with strong opinions on either side.

The district is one of the few in our area that hasn’t had a mask requirement to this point, this school year.

“It’s a slap in the face to everybody that they don’t seem to care about the children’s health. They don’t seem to care about the impact on the community,” says UCPS parent Amanda Moore.

Moore brought her daughter to Tuesday night’s rally.

She said she had a message for district leaders.

“I would tell them to look in the faces of these children. And think about one of these kids intubated in the hospital and tell me that it’s too much of an inconvenience to have them wear masks in school,” she says.

Pro-mask parents say they’re worried about the growing number of cases in the district.

The latest numbers for the week ending September 3rd show 367 positive cases among students and employees, with 5,410 in quarantine.

But other parents say their rights and freedoms would be violated if a mask mandate is put in place.

“At the end of the day, freedom, enshrined in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, that doesn’t take a break because there’s some sort of emergency,” says UCPS parent Michael Freeman.

Freeman has five children in the district.

“There is an emergency every single day of the year and you can conceptually just do a clampdown on all of society every single day of the year, and the thing that blocks that is our rights bestowed by God,” he says.