Children between the ages of 2 and 11 will be required to wear masks in Adams, Douglas and Arapahoe counties schools and child care settings, the Tri-County Board of Health voted Tuesday night, after shooting down a broader face-covering mandate.

The approved order, which will be drafted in the coming days, will also apply to staff who regularly “work with or interact with” children in those settings. The vote followed 90 minutes of public comment Monday night and more than an hour of executive session deliberations by the nine-member board, which has three members from each of the counties it represents. Before voting 6-2 to approve the limited mandate, the board voted 4-4 – with one abstention – against requiring all students and staff in schools and child care centers to be masked.

Children younger than 12 are not currently eligible to be masked. Jefferson County Public Schools initially required just those younger students be masked, but the public health agency there issued an order this week expanding it to all students.

Board members who supported masking – even on the more limited basis – pointed to recommendations by various health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state Department of Public Health and Environment and health care groups, as evidence of the science backing it. Board president Kaia Gallagher, who voted against the first motion but supported the second, said the evidence “suggests that advantages of wearing masks outweigh the risks” for students.

She said that nine of the 15 districts across the three counties had already instituted some form of mask mandates. Gallaghar said Monday night that the board had received more than 10,000 comments and that more than 2,000 people had signed up to give public comment. 

Board member Thomas Fawell, a medical doctor representing Arapahoe County, said the masking recommendations from the CDC and others were “based on what appears to be regional problems.” He specifically pointed to COVID-19 spikes in Florida and Texas, which outstrip Colorado’s recent increases. 

“While we do have an increase in cases, which puts us in what they have termed high transmission, our cases and transmissions don’t equal hospitalizations or deaths,” he said.

Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties are all rated by the state as having high transmission rates. While hospitalizations have not spiked to highs seen last fall, they have consistently climbed statewide of late. They are now as high as they were in mid-May, when the fourth pandemic wave was beginning to lessen.

Fawell introduced the motion to require masks only for children between the ages of 2 and 11. 

Linda Fielding, a Douglas County doctor, opposed both orders. She said she, as an “unelected bureaucrat,” should not overrule the “local control of the people.” She pointed to Gov. Jared Polis, who has not instituted a statewide mask mandate for schools. She advocated watching the situation moving forward.

“Things can change in a day,” she said. “But we can put masks on in a day.” 

Julie Mullica, who introduced the initial motion to require masking across the board in schools and child care settings, said in her experience, the constant pivoting from in-person learning to remote last year was more damaging to students than masks. Based on the recommendations from so many health organizations – 19 in Colorado urged masks in schools last week – “I can’t find the heart to disregard the recommendations.”

The approved motion will be turned into a public health order in the coming days by Tri-County’s staff, Gallagher said, and the order will be posted when it’s complete. She said that under the agency’s policy, counties can opt out of the order, though individual districts and facilities can choose to follow it anyway.

The Douglas County Commissioners opted out of a Tri-County health order in April. The two Douglas County board members who voted – Fielder and Kim  Muramoto – both voted to both motions. The third member, Zachary Nannestad, abstained because he’s employed by one of the districts.