Allegheny Valley School District will require masks for everyone when school starts

Masks will be mandatory in the Allegheny Valley School District when the new school year begins.

The school district’s health and safety plan, adopted Tuesday on a 7-2 vote, requires all students, staff and visitors to wear masks in district buildings and on buses. Masks won’t be required during recess, lunch and activities such as playing a musical instrument.

School board member David Buchman, who voted in favor of the health and safety plan, cited 14 studies that he said showed mask-wearing and other measures such as hand-washing are effective at slowing the spread of covid-19. He added that 178 Allegheny County health professionals had come out in favor of such recommendations.

Several people attending Tuesday’s meeting had other ideas.

As the meeting began, about a dozen audience members were not wearing masks. When asked to don masks, the residents refused and the school board went into executive session.

One man said it was his right not to wear a mask, and added, “This isn’t Communist China.” When approached by a Tribune-Review reporter for an interview, the man said he was “not interested” and walked out of the building.

During the executive session, school district police officer Kevin Gourley told the crowd assembled at the Acmetonia Forum that Solicitor Kenneth Schultz advised the school board they could choose to hold the meeting virtually unless everyone wore a mask.

When the public meeting resumed, several residents spoke out against a mask requirement and questioned the effectiveness of masks in slowing the spread of covid-19.

Springdale Township’s Jackie Graham, who said she has worked in the health care field for 30 years, said she thought it was the job of parents and legal guardians to make such decisions.

Mary Ellen Ecker, of Springdale Township, said she thought a task force of school personnel and residents should be formed to create policy.

Cheswick’s Eugene Hudak said he thought making students wear masks would make them unhappy and, he argued, it could make them sleepy.

“They would breathe in their own germs and carbon dioxide that could put them to sleep,” Hudak added.

Voting in favor of the health and safety plan was board President Larry Pollick, Buchman, James Gaschler, Joelle McFarland, Paula Jean Moretti, Stephen Puskar and Shawn Whalen. Kathleen Haas and Antonio Pollino voted against it.

Pollino moved to amend the measure to exclude elementary students, but the motion died because no one seconded it.

Superintendent Patrick Graczyk said the policy could be changed or modified if advice from health care officials and government agencies changes.

Graczyk said students entering Springdale Junior-Senior High School and Acmetonia Elementary in Harmar without a mask will be handed one. If they refuse to put it on, Graczyk said the situation would be handled on a case-by-case basis but he hoped there would compliance.