Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) announced on Wednesday that all students and staff must wear a mask during the upcoming school year, a direct violation of state law.
The mandate will be implemented on Thursday, when the new school year begins and over 40,000 students resume classes.
“While Gov. Ducey and the state Legislature has decided to ignore the advice of our public health experts and endanger our community, we can’t sit idle and watch COVID inevitably spread throughout our schools and devastate so many TUSD families,” said board member Ravi Grivois-Shah during an emergency Governing Board meeting Wednesday morning. “This is why I will support, along with my colleagues, a requirement to have masks on TUSD campuses and authorize TUSD to enforce this.”
Earlier this year, the Arizona state legislature passed a law, included in the state’s budget, that prevents all public schools from implementing and enforcing a mask mandate.
The move, which passed unanimously among board members, follows two other school districts in the state that have directly ignored the new state law.
The three school districts have pointed to new guidance released by the CDC that recommends all students wear a mask in the upcoming school year.
“In an effort to protect our staff, students, and community, PXU has a good faith belief that the following guidance from the CDC and other health agencies regarding mitigation strategies is imperative. Therefore, Phoenix Union will begin the school year on August 2 enforcing our existing Board-adopted mask requirement of universal indoor masking only, regardless of vaccination status,” claimed Phoenix Union High School District, one of the first districts to defy the state order.
However, after the new recommendations from the government agency, Governor Ducey slammed the move. He said, “Arizona does not allow mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports or discrimination in schools based on who is or isn’t vaccinated. We’ve passed all of this into law, and it will not change.”
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Cooper Moran is a reporter for the Star News Network. Follow Cooper on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
