Youngkin’s mask-optional order divides Virginia schools and parents, threatening chaos

A level of statewide chaos unprecedented in recent memory is looming for Virginia schools, as a new Republican governor prepares to enforce a mask-optional mandate on Monday that many superintendents and parents have vowed to fight, or to uphold, with all the ammunition they can muster. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is just more than a week into his governorship, issued an executive order on his first day in office delegating to parents the decision on whether children wear masks at school. The order, which contravenes federal health guidance and masking requirements maintained by the vast majority of Virginia school districts throughout the coronavirus pandemic, is in keeping with Youngkin’s campaign promise to give parents greater control over all aspects of their children’s education. The order is supposed to take effect Monday for all of Virginia’s roughly 130 school districts and more than 1.5 million public and private schoolchildren.

But it has already plunged Youngkin into a bitter war with significant swaths of the public school system: Within days of the order’s announcement, superintendents in the suburbs just outside D.C. and in Youngkin’s new home, Richmond, promised to keep requiring masks. In response, Virginia’s lieutenant governor said Youngkin could pull funding from disobedient districts. A group of parents also sued to reverse the order, and Youngkin filed to dismiss their suit. Experts predict cascading legal and political challenges to come. “The governor [is] throwing jet fuel on an already divisive culture clash in Virginia,” said Mark Rozell, the dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, “and inviting lawsuits that will now consume much of his administration.” In the meantime, nobody knows exactly what will happen Monday. In online forums over the weekend, pro- and anti-mask parents fought battles in comment sections, with some vowing to demonstrate outside schools in favor of masks, while others said they would protest them. For his part, Youngkin advised parents this weekend to listen to their school principals — though he has also said he believes the courts will rule in his favor.