Students in fifth grade wear masks as they wait for their teacher in the classroom at Oak Terrace Elementary School in Highwood, Illinois.

ATLANTA — A bill allowing parents to opt out of school mask mandates cleared the Georgia Senate earlier this week and now heads to the House.

Gov. Brian Kemp launched the “Unmask Georgia Students Act” as part of several legislative efforts to give parents more rights in their child’s education. 

The proposal states no local school board can require a student to wear a mask or face covering while on school property unless the district allows a parent to exempt their child from the requirement.  

“This does not circumvent home rules, the local school boards and school districts can still implement mask mandates. This bill just simply empowers parents to opt their child out if they choose to do so,” Republican Sen. Clint Dixon said.  

Many of the bill’s supporters said mask requirements impose learning loss on students and are an overreach, especially as children are in an age group least likely to get sick or die from COVID-19. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that since January 2020 more than 800 people age 17 and younger have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. That makes up less than 1% of reported COVID-related deaths in the country.  

“The reality is that we have a tragic loss of life every year to sickness and virus,” Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal said. “We lost more children last year to drowning than we did COVID. … Life is about weighing the pros and cons and what we do know about masks is that there’s no strong evidence for the pros when it comes to children.”

Dolezal’s comments supported other statements arguing that data has been inconsistent as it pertains to the effectiveness of masks and various types of masks in preventing COVID.  

The Senate’s approval of the act Tuesday comes after the CDC relaxed its masking guidances last week. The new guidance recommends against mask mandates in schools, but only K-12 and early education settings in areas with a “low” or “medium” COVID-19 community level.

More than a third of counties in Georgia are in areas considered “high” community levels where the CDC still recommends wearing masks while indoors, regardless of vaccination status.

Those areas are largely in rural areas of the state in north and South Georgia and include Lowndes and Colquitt counties in South Georgia, and Whitfield in far North Georgia. 

The CDC determined community levels based on the number of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the county in the past seven days, the total of COVID-19 hospital admissions in the last seven days and the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

“CDC recommends using county COVID-19 community levels to help determine which COVID-19 prevention measures to use for individuals and communities, the guidance states. “Some community settings such as schools and some high-risk congregate settings such as correctional facilities and homeless shelters might include additional layers of prevention based on information and data about the characteristics of the setting.”

More than 40 of 180 school districts in the state had at least one school with a mask mandate as of February, according to reports.

Democrats said the decision for mask mandates should be left to local school boards to protect their staffs and students.

“They got elected just as we all did. Please allow them to protect their children,” Democrat Sen. Donzella James said. “We need (masks) more than ever now because (COVID) still exists. So don’t let the numbers escalate again because that’s body bags in and out of the hospital.”