Delegates request meeting regarding Utah mask mandate

GALLUP

Last Wednesday the Health, Education and Human Services Committee approved a motion to request a meeting with Utah’s San Juan County School Board and Superintendent Ron Nielson to discuss the district’s lifting of the mask mandate.

This meeting was requested for March 7.

Concerns over the mask mandates was brought up by San Juan County Commissioner Kenneth Maryboy about three weeks ago.

He was concerned for Diné students that attend schools in Blanding and the northern part of the district — the Mountain Region.

His concerns revolved around Navajo students being around unmasked students, possibly contracting the COVID-19 virus and spreading it to their family.

Nielson attended HEHSC’s regular meeting last Wednesday to shed some light and explain the situation.

“Our school board, trying to sort through all this, made a decision very early that they are still very much supportive of that decision,” he said.

“The decision was to put forth as much effort as possible to comply with all rules and expectations of the Navajo Nation, all of the rules and expectations of the state of Utah, and all of the health departments,” he said.

When the school board began preparing for the 2020-21 school year, they looked into the regulations and surveyed parents asking if they wanted their students to attend in-person classes or to be taught online.

The results showed that parents within the River Region, the region ruled by Navajo Nation regulations, wanted virtual while in the Mountain Region, the region ruled by the state of Utah regulations, wanted in-person classes.

The school board approved this decision and put a mask mandate in place for the Mountain region.

Later in the school year, parents became angry with the mask mandate and demanded the school board to get rid of it.

“Well, we held tight to ours,” Nielson said. “We continued to enforce a face covering mandate but we knew that they (the parents) were also working with legislature and our representatives in Utah.”

As soon as the 2020-21 school year ended, the Utah Legislature called a special session in late May/early June of 2021.

“They (the Legislature), being driven by lots of voices that were complaining about the mask mandates in Utah all across the state, they passed a law,” Nielson said. “The law was a House Bill 1007. It was passed in a special session and it removed the authority from school districts in Utah to impose a mask mandate.

“It put the authority into the hands of the local health department and the local county commission,” he said.

Once the 2021-22 school year began, parents who had students attending schools in the River Region were surveyed asking if they wanted their students in in-person classes.

The parents agreed to their children attending in-person classes only if they were safe and mask mandates were put in place.

Since this is the region that follows the Nation’s regulations and is under the Nation’s jurisdiction, the school board agreed and passed a mask mandate only for this region.

However, a mask mandate was not imposed in the Mountain Region.

“We did not impose a mask mandate in the Mountain Region because we knew our parents that had been so active would immediately draw upon the state of Utah and would be very aggressive in bringing the powers that be upon the San Juan school district because we would be violating state law in Blanding and Monticello,” Nielson said.

As of January, after the Utah Legislature held a new session, they amended the law so that no one can impose mask mandates and if anyone wants to, they must go through the Legislature.

“My school board, the school board of San Juan School District, is diligently trying to maneuver between two government entities – the state of Utah and the Navajo Nation,” Nielson said.

“And they are trying to be as accommodating and understanding as possible to both but they have moved in very different directions,” he said.

Nielson said there are many precautions and guidelines in place to prevent the transmission of the virus in areas where there is a mixture of masked and unmasked people.

“I will say in all 12 of our schools, we provide PPE, we put in place of plan of frequent and often cleaning, sanitation, sterilizing,” he said. “We have all the things in place with our buses of cleaning after every route.

“We’re using technology to try to be as effective as possible,” he said. “We’ve evaluated our HVAC systems and made improvements where we felt needed.”

The committee, if approved by all parties involved, will have a meeting with the San Juan School District to discuss concerns and solutions to accommodate regulations set by both the state of Utah and the Nation.

“The whole globe right now is trying to figure out how do we protect ourselves and how do we balance, you know, individual rights and liberties and our communal responsibilities for public health and our public safety and well-being,” Slater said.

“I think as long as we don’t go to one extreme or the other, we’ll be making good decisions,” he said.

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