The Daily - Back to School Amid the Delta Variant

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

To ensure students’ safe return to in-person learning amid a surge in the Delta variant of the coronavirus, some school districts plan to institute mask mandates.Yet that move isn’t necessarily straightforward — several of the country’s hardest-hit states have banned such mandates.We look at how this conflict is playing out in Arkansas. Guest: Richard Fausset, a correspondent covering the American South for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas signed a law banning mask mandates early this year. Now, he wants to unravel it, reflecting a dilemma for Republican governors across the South, where the health crisis has deepened.School officials in Florida and Arizona say they intend to require students and teachers to wear masks in school, despite statewide bans on such policies.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. To safely bring students back to school this fall amid a resurgence of infections, communities across the U.S. are planning to mandate masks. But there's a problem. to mandate masks. But there's a problem. Several of the country's hardest-hit states have banned such mandates. Sabrina Tavernisi spoke with our colleague, Richard Fawcett,

about how that conflict is playing out in Arkansas. It's Monday, August 9th. But my son, who just started middle school, who started sixth grade and had his third day of school, will be barging into the house in more or less 26 minutes. So we'll have that to look forward to. Uh-oh. Okay, let's hurry up. All right. Okay, so it's August, and kids are starting to go back to school, including in your own state of Georgia. kids are starting to go back to school, including in your own state of Georgia.

And I'm kind of remembering last year at this time when we were really pretty confused about the state of schools and what was going to happen with kids. I mean, you had some places going back, some places not going back. It's kind of a mess. And so now we're a year later. Where are we with kids in schools? Well, I think you're right. I think it was a real mess as we approached the beginning of the last school year. There were different policies in different school districts, but a lot of school districts opted to tell their students to stay home. My own kids stayed home for much, if not all, of the school year last year. But I think there's been a consensus as we approach the coming school year that kids really need to be in school. They need to be

together. They need to be in their seats. They need to be in front of their teachers learning together. It's good for socialization. It's probably good for just ingesting and processing information. But this year, there's this big new concern. The Delta variant is raging through many of our communities. And part of the concern is that kids under 12 can't get vaccinated. And that's led to this very emotional issue of how exactly we get kids back into school this fall safely. There are a number of places where kids are going to be heading back into schools with a very strict mask mandate. Every single child will be back in the classroom. New York City is one of these places. I had hoped that a state mask requirement in schools wouldn't be necessary.

The governor of Illinois. But it is. Recently announced that there would be a mask mandate in Illinois' K-12 schools. The Delta variant is highly transmissible, more so than any other previous forms of this virus. But in a lot of southern states, you have bans on mask mandates. It is ridiculous for a school district to be requiring children to wear the masks unless the parents of those children want them to wear masks. In South Carolina, the legislature has enacted a mask mandate ban. This is an issue of parental choice and will not be an issue of mandates.

And in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott instituted a ban through an executive order in July. There will be no mandates in Texas schools about wearing masks. And the place where this issue is really blowing up is Florida. Why would we have government force masks on our kids? Where Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has issued an order barring schools from implementing mask mandates. Shouldn't this be something that the parent isn't best to evaluate, the effect that this would have on their children? Governor DeSantis, like a lot of Republicans of a certain mind of thinking, is concerned about government

overreach. My wife and I are not going to do the mass with the kids. We never have. I want to see my kids smiling. I want them having fun. So Governor DeSantis has responded to this kind of rebellion in his midst in a typically two-fisted rhetorical way. We can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state. And I can tell you, Florida, we're a free state. He's actually threatening now to pull funding from schools that actually enact mask mandates. And so what are schools doing? Well, the school districts, a number of them are digging in their heels. I need to do what's right to protect the employees and the students. They may end up starting school with a mask mandate. If the governor's office pursues action to limit funding for your district, what are you going to do?

We are hoping that this is not the case. And it looks like we're headed for a big showdown. Okay, so we have on one end of the spectrum, basically blue state liberal politicians who are imposing mask mandates. And then we have on the other, red state conservative politicians who are resisting them. So is this just sort of a typical red state, blue state divide we've come to expect in the American political system? red state, blue state divide we've come to expect in the American political system? I guess so. But you also have this case that emerged in the last few days of Arkansas, which is a very conservative Republican-leaning state. President Trump won the state by 27 points in November. But you have a Republican governor there, a second-term governor, Asa Hutchinson, who really is more

of an old-school Reaganite Republican, but he's dealing with an extremely conservative state legislature. And toward the end of the first wave of the pandemic, as new cases were going down earlier this year, he made some concessions to that much more conservative wing of his party. And now he's really running into trouble. And it's coming back to bite him over the issue of the wearing of masks in schools. So Richard, go back to the beginning with the governor. How did he manage the pandemic at first? Well, I think a lot of Arkansans, including a lot of Democrats, would give Governor Hutchinson pretty good marks for his handling of the first

phase of this pandemic. I have listened to doctors and nurses who were on the front line in this fight against COVID-19, and they ask the public to do more. He was trying, like many governors, to balance concerns about public health with the need to keep the economy open. Early in 2020, he ordered the shutdown of gyms, dining rooms, and bars. And by July... I do want to announce today that I am issuing a statewide mandate for face coverings. He put in place a statewide mask mandate on the theory that this would actually help businesses stay open safely. I believe this mandate is appropriate and necessary.

I think there's a lot of support for the governor when he issued his mask mandate across party lines. But there are also certainly some prominent conservatives who were concerned about it. concerned about it. But the governor kept the mask mandate through the winter and didn't rescind it until March, when the numbers started really plummeting, at least for a while. And so by the criteria that we set, it's an appropriate time to lift the statewide mask mandate. But there was still a problem, and that's that a number of conservatives, particularly conservatives in the state legislature, were really worried about any future impingement on personal liberty after having gone through this very difficult period. And so in April, the governor found himself with a bill on his desk that he ended up signing. And this law ended up banning any kind of mask mandates in most government entities.

Wow. So here's this Republican legislature. It's saying basically, scrapping the mandate isn't good enough for us. We want to prevent the governor and anyone else from ever issuing another one. And Hutchinson, a guy who's actually been pretty non-ideological about masks all along, he signs it, essentially tying his own hands for the future. Why would he do that? It's a good question. And some observers, including some Democrats, feel like he may have been trying to navigate the politics of the state, even though Asa Hutchinson can't run for re-election. He's a very popular politician in Arkansas. He's been can't run for reelection. He's a very popular politician

in Arkansas. He's been around public life for many decades. He's a very smart guy. And a lot of people think that he may be eyeing higher office and that perhaps this was a way to kind of find a way to placate the more Trumpian hard right elements that are part of the Republican base in Arkansas. But he also has said that it looked like this crisis was over and it was a real gamble because you had to sort of hope that the pandemic wouldn't come roaring back. And that's exactly what it did a few months later. what it did a few months later. We'll be right back.

Richard, what happens when the Delta variant starts surging in Arkansas? So Arkansas, like most states, saw this really nice trough with very low numbers of new cases that went from the spring in toward the early summer. The whole idea of wearing a mask starts to fade into the background and life starts to kind of return to normal. But then Delta hits in the summertime and you started to see a lot of the concerns around personal freedom and personal liberty that had made some people wary of wearing a mask now surface when it came to the question of vaccines. And this vaccine hesitancy became a real concern for Governor Hutchinson, who rightly sees the vaccine as the key to bringing the number of

cases down in his state. So he launched on this barnstorming tour of a number of communities around the state. I am so thrilled to be here. And this is incredible crowd that's here at a very awkward time. Where he took the case personally to people, including many skeptics, arguing to them that they really needed to get a shot in the arm to get over this next wave. We want to hear from everybody, but let's make a few comments and we'll turn it open for discussion. But I also want to put this in perspective in terms of COVID. So the governor's goal was to really try to beat back a ton of misinformation that's out there and a ton of anger and a ton of fear.

And it's really been this kind of remarkable effort to get out in front of people and try to sort of vaccinate them against misinformation. and try to sort of vaccinate them against misinformation. We simply ask people to talk to your trusted advisor, it sounds like, that you have, and you make a decision for your child. It sounds like he's trying to prevent vaccines from becoming the new masks. In other words, he's trying to keep this issue

from becoming the next political lightning rod. Yeah, exactly. But as the governor is bombing around the state with this message, there were people all over who were receptive to the message, but he was certainly also getting a lot of vocal pushback in a number of places. It's just simply your choice, but I also have to address it from a public health standpoint as a state, knowing that we're going to be living with people dying if we do not increase our vaccination rates. So I still need to get that message out.

It's just frankly a lot of people who are just working off of misinformation. And it's a very scary situation. So, ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. No, no, no, don't give her the mic. ...out by the WHO in October or November because they said the COVID PCR test... People were calling him a liar. We know the truth.

All right, so let's identify... Would you all like to be recognized? There were a lot of signs and a lot of shouting We know this room. All right, so let's identify. Would you all like to be recognized? There were a lot of signs and a lot of shouting from people who were very skeptical about vaccines and very concerned about more government regulations. So we'd like to have people have an opportunity to say something, but also for us to be able to respond. have people have an opportunity to say something, but also for us to be able to respond. And I think Governor Hutchinson would argue that not only did he try to keep his presentation to such people based in the science, but that he also tried to approach them with a certain sense of respect, a respect for their skepticism, in an effort to really bring a kind of evidence-based

and less hot-under-the-collar response. Thank you. Thank you. All right, so y'all, I appreciate everybody that's expressed themselves. I think very clearly we got about every viewpoint that's been expressed. So the governor's going around the state. And particularly recently, we've seen some of the vaccination numbers go up in the state. But it's still lagging compared to a lot of states. And in the meantime, the beginning of school is looming, ever larger.

So on the one hand, you have kids under 12 who can't get vaccinated, who are about to be back in the classroom. And you also have this large number of adults who are holding out on getting vaccinated. And it kind of rolls into this big ball of concern about how kids are actually going to be able to go back to school safely. And it's that concern that really brought the question of masks in school back to the forefront of the conversation in Arkansas. Right. And so what are schools saying about this as this first day back approaches? Well, you've had a number of school districts that have been very concerned to the point where they've pleaded with the governor and with the legislature to let

them go ahead and put a mask mandate in place, particularly as the numbers continue to look quite bad. Can you start off, Superintendent, by telling me when you start school and what your plan is? Last week, I talked to the superintendent of the Little Rock School District. It has, I think, 20,000 something students. We've been in a planning mode in some ways for 18 months. It has been nonstop. And he essentially told me that a huge part of his job was to broadly ensure that the children in his care were safe and remained safe. When you have this many people that have not got a vaccine, adults and kids in particular, and under 12 can't even have a vaccine, that you've got to put every tool in your belt to try to create a protective environment.

And in his opinion, this meant having the freedom to enact a mask mandate for his kids and for his staff. But of course, he can't actually do that because there's a law against the mask mandates that Governor Hutchinson signed. That's right. So Governor Hutchinson, feeling the pressure from some superintendents and some school boards and some school officials who really wanted to put a mask mandate in place, announced that he was going to convene a special session of the legislature in an effort to get them to create a kind of legal carve-out to the mask mandate ban.

But it would only apply to school districts. But making this plan happen so far has been a pretty difficult proposition. And I think one of the purest manifestations of the opposition to that kind of idea was one that I really stumbled upon when I flew to Arkansas last week. I got in a car and drove straight to the state capitol in downtown Little Rock to try to set up some meetings. But before I even walked in the building, I realized that I was in the midst of an anti-mask mandate and to a large degree anti-vaccination rally on the steps of the state capitol. We just need to quit being the silent majority. There were about 80 people there. The feeling felt a bit like a Trump rally. There was a lot of Trump paraphernalia,

a lot of don't tread on me, Gadsden flags, a lot of American flags. It was an all white crowd. Let's let them hear it inside. Let's get loud. And it was a very impassioned affair. A number of people spoke out against the mask mandate. They spoke out against Governor Hutchinson. We're not masking our kids again. I want to hear it. We're not masking our kids again. I want to hear it. We are not masking our kids again. Do not comply. Absolutely do not comply. Because if you follow the news,

the mainstream media in the United States, you're being lied to. Kind of laying out this argument that the ban on the mask mandates needed to stand. Stand firm for 10-002. Stand firm for 10-002. At one point, one of the adult speakers asked if there were any students and children who wanted to come up and speak. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I want to see if any of the kids would like to say this is what what they're voting on is affecting you more than it is us. Nobody came up at first, but eventually there was a 10 year old girl named Samantha.

And we do have one brave kid that's wanting to come up here named Samantha. She's 10 years old. Y'all give her a hand. Masks are dumb. She just said masks are dumb. Simple as that. I mean, she speaks the truth. Speaks the truth. So what you're describing is pretty intense, pretty emotional, right? So even this little carve out, even that is too charged right now. Yes. And, you know, that's a real reflection, I think, of where a lot of the energy is in the Republican Party in a state like Arkansas, where you have this extremely emotional response to issues like mask mandates, which I think public health officials would like to see discussed with a minimum of emotion. And yet it's the energy that's emanating off of this issue among the grassroots that is reflected in these very

conservative legislatures and even affecting legislators who aren't super far to the right, but who fear being primaried in their districts from their right flank if they don't, for example, stand by this ban on mask mandates. So going back to the beginning, Richard, it kind of feels like that gamble that you were talking about, the political calculation that Hutchinson made in signing the ban on mask mandates is kind of coming back to bite him. Yeah, I think so. Thank you for joining me for today's update. I'm glad to have. You know, I asked him about this at a news conference and he said that he regretted it. Yes, in hindsight, I wish that had not become law, but it is the law. And the only chance we have is either to amend it or for the courts to

say that it has an unconstitutional foundation. And so last week, I sat down with Governor Hutchinson in his office, and he was happy to talk about where things had been and where things were going. I think the entire debate and controversies over masks is very, very unfortunate and has made it difficult, certainly, for people to follow medical science and to have trust in it, which we ordinarily do in our country. So in my conversation with the governor, I asked if he was worried that the signing of the bill in April may have hardened distrust about the overall culture of mask wearing. Did you worry that the signing of the bill would sow distrust just about the culture

of mask wearing and that sort of thing? of mask wearing and that sort of thing. You're saying that Act 1002 reinforced the skepticism of people about masks. Yeah. I think they already, perhaps, I mean, that could be fair. And he said that it very well may have. It took tools away from the executive branch in managing the public health crisis, but it locked it in. So, Richard, it sounds like what he's saying to you in this interview is he's a little bit stuck. I mean, what can he do if masks are kind of a lost cause?

Well, that's a really good question. In some ways, the governor got what he wanted, but not exactly in the way he thought he would. On Friday, a judge in Little Rock issued an injunction to temporarily block the entire mask mandate ban. And this came just almost minutes after the state legislature met in their special session and declined to take up what was essentially his amendment to the law. But there's still a lot up in the air. These issues may now have to be fought district to district. And the governor now, I think, thinks that he's going to have to really focus on the issue that he thinks he can get some traction on, which is the question of vaccines. Yes, there is hope. And we see that demonstrated every day with the increase in vaccinations.

And in fact, he said he's going to go back out on the trail and keep going to the people and trying to make the case in person that they get a shot in the arm. What's important is that whenever you have these town hall meetings, no one is shamed. They want to have honest conversations. You have to treat skepticism with respect, which I do, and having trusted people that respond to it. That's resulted in yesterday, 30,000 vaccinations in Arkansas. So I see a lot of hope in what we're doing. And regardless of what the legislature does, we're going to increase those vaccinations, and we're going to work through this.

Great. Very helpful. Let me turn this off. So I think the big concern in Arkansas and beyond is whether or not these fights over mask mandates are going to continue. And what that might mean for the warp in the rhythm of the coming school year. I had a conversation with the superintendent of the Marion Arkansas School District, which starts its school year quite early in late July. And after the first few days, they found 10 positive coronavirus cases in their schools and they had to subsequently quarantine 168 people. And I think if masks continue to be this big fight, it's going to raise a lot of questions and a lot of fears for parents and for educators about exactly how this coming school year is going to go.

Right. So the stakes feel pretty high. I mean, kids might have another lost year of school. I think that's the possibility that has everyone on edge right now. Thank you, Richard. Thanks, Sabrina. Nice talking to you. We'll be right back. Thank you. Over the past week, four regional capitals have fallen to the Taliban. The successful attacks highlight the risk of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is scheduled to be completed next month.

And on Sunday night, the 32nd Summer Olympics came to a close, much as they began, with an elaborate ceremony held in a stadium without a crowd because of COVID-19 restrictions. We take this moment to remember the many people that have contributed to make these Olympics possible, both near and far, and those that couldn't be with us in Tokyo. Overall, the United States won the most medals, taking home more than 100, and just barely won the most gold medals, edging out China by a single medal. Today's episode was produced by Rob Sipko and Eric Krupke,

with help from Annie Brown. It was edited by Paige Coward, contains original music by Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.