The Douglas County Commission will vote again on an anti-masking resolution Tuesday, this time urging the county’s school district to disregard a face-covering mandate that the commissioners rejected and the district implemented.

The vote will take place just before the Douglas County School District’s next board meeting Tuesday night. It’s the latest in a weeklong saga in the county, which was placed under a masking mandate passed by the Tri-County Health Department’s Board of Health on Aug. 17. The commission met later that week and voted to opt out of it, but the district implemented the mandate all the same; the policy went into effect Monday. Both those moves – the commission’s opt out and the district’s opt-in – are permissible.

Last week, before Douglas County School District’s superintendent, Corey Wise, wrote to families and announced the policy, commissioner George Teal directed staff to draft the resolution. All three of the board’s members voted in favor of Teal’s motion.

Via the resolution, the commission will request “that the Board of Education for Douglas County School District RE-1 exercise its discretion and formally resolve not to adopt Tri-County Health Department’s Public Health Order dated August 18, 2021, requiring face covering for schools and child care settings, as its own policy or rule at the Board of Education’s next public meeting.” 

At its Tuesday night meeting, the school board will hear from Wise about the order, according to its agenda and a presentation Wise will deliver to its members. The presentation states that he’s following the district’s own policies. The policy he references says the “management of common communicable diseases will be in accordance with Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment or Tri-County Health Department guidelines.”

“I am acting in accordance with my understanding of (board of education) policy; with your confirmation, continuing to implement (the policy) and the TCHD Public Health Order,” Wise wrote in one of the presentation’s slides. “Douglas County School District requires all students in preschool through sixth grade to wear face coverings in all indoor school settings. This requirement also applies to all staff who work with this age group.”

The commissioners meet at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, and the school board will meet at 6 that evening.