NEWPORT, Maine — Students who refused to wear face masks were held in Nokomis Regional Middle School gymnasium Friday morning, with options to put their masks on and return to class or stay put until someone could pick them up.
Regional School Unit 19 Superintendent Michael Hammer estimated that 60 students and 20 parents protested the school’s mandatory mask policy outside the middle school Friday morning. Some tried to enter the school and administrators separated them from students who complied with the universal masking policy.
School districts across Maine have come under pressure as the mask mandates stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have sparked questions and complaints from parents, who often show up at school board meetings to voice their concerns. At Nokomis Regional Middle School, a small group of students who refused to wear masks Thursday grew into several dozen on Friday.
“We’re not there yet,” Hammer said, referring to optional masking. “The conversation has to be had at the school board level, not me trying to argue with a father and his kid.”
Around 11:45 a.m. Friday, Hammer said he didn’t know how many students were still in the gymnasium.
Newport police officers were at the school both days, but they never interacted with students, he said.
The next school board meeting is March 8, though it’s possible that a special meeting could be scheduled to discuss the masking policy, Hammer said. He has asked students and parents for their patience and suggested the district wait until about two weeks after vacation to make masking optional in case there is a spike in COVID infections.
The school sent home a handful of students Thursday after they refused to wear their masks, Hammer said. They were held in a conference room until their parents could pick them up and take them home. He had conversations with several of them.
The protests continued Friday and grew into a much larger group, he said.
There was peer pressure involved throughout the morning, Hammer said, giving the example of some students not planning to participate in the protest with parents, but joining to avoid going to class.
“Some of them definitely came in with their parents and were making a statement. When it was time to go [to class], some tried to get in the building, and we weren’t going to let them just go to class and sit with somebody else whose parents wanted them to wear a mask,” he said.
Seven or eight high school students were in the middle school lobby at one point, but were quickly sent back to their area, he said.
Students and parents have argued that neighboring school districts have changed their mask policies recently.
“They’re saying, ‘Districts down the street have dropped their mandate,’” he said. “We’ve talked about it all over the Penquis region. There will be a day, probably in the next few weeks, when we’ll take them off. In their mind, I think they’re going to continue to protest until the day they come off, which is very frustrating. I get it. They look at me frustrated, and I look at them just as frustrated. There isn’t a superintendent in the state that isn’t frustrated about this.”