In a letter the Douglas County School District sent to parents Oct. “Not masking increases the likelihood that our kids are going to get sent home to do remote learning.” “It’s not ideal when your local health department, which has zero experience, goes against the CDC, the AAP and CDPHE,” Poplawski said. With the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment all recommending universal indoor masking for teachers, staff members, students and visitors to K-12 schools, the science is clear, he said. Poplawski, a father of two who lives in Parker, said Douglas County is “following politics” in breaking away from the Tri-County Health Department and overriding the mask order. It was outpacing Arapahoe and Adams counties, the other two members of Tri-County, in COVID-19 incidence rate. Our parental authority is not being respected.”ĭouglas County this week had nearly 180 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population over a seven-day cumulative period, a rate that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorizes as high community spread and that triggers its masking guidance. “We have one (pediatric) death over the course of the entire pandemic, and the case numbers don’t support what’s happening. “What we’re asking for is choice - and choice alone,” she said. Teegan Braun, a mother of four from Castle Rock, pulled her children out of the Douglas County School District last year over the mask requirement. 1 mask order for all students 2 and older, hasn’t even had time to choose an executive director or launch any programs.īut mask mandates for students - those 17 and younger in Douglas County have seen only one death from COVID-19 since the pandemic started 19 months ago - was too much for many parents in this conservative county south of Denver. The new agency, which was formed just two weeks after Tri-County handed down a Sept. Douglas County Commissioner George Teal confirmed for The Denver Post the substance of the health order even though the details were not available. The directive, which was still being drafted Thursday night, will be discussed at the second meeting of the Douglas County board of health, which is scheduled for 3 p.m. The order, which also raises the threshold for what would trigger a quarantine in the classroom, is the culmination of weeks of recriminations between county leaders and public health and school officials over COVID-19 mitigation measures in schools, a fight that last month led Douglas County to end a 55-year partnership with the Tri-County Health Department. Douglas County's new health department may let students cast off masks in schoolĭouglas County’s new health department, less than a month old, is expected to issue its first public health order Friday - to allow parents to exempt their children from the school district’s controversial mask mandate.

The mask cast