The state’s mask mandate for public schools will end next week after the Kentucky General Assembly overrode a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear late Thursday. School districts may still choose to implement their own mask requirements.
Senate Bill 1 eliminates the Kentucky Board of Education’s mask mandate in public K-12 schools, among other policy changes.
The bill takes effect immediately, but school districts have five business days until the mandate is officially voided, giving local officials a short time to decide upon their own requirements.
Owensboro and Daviess County public schools, as well as Owensboro Catholic Schools, have all announced they will continue to require universal masking.
Thursday afternoon during the legislature’s extraordinary session, SB1 passed through the Senate 28-8 and the House 70-25. Beshear’s veto came around 10 p.m. and within roughly an hour was overridden by the Senate 22-6 and the House 69-24.
During discussions early in the day, Republican lawmakers said the bill was focused on providing districts flexibility to keep students in school as much as possible.
However, Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass issued a statement Thursday afternoon — after initial passage but before the veto and overrides — that the bill does not go far enough in providing the flexibility that schools need to operate and remain in person.
“Further, the politically motivated effort to remove masking requirements in public schools weakens our virus mitigation efforts as a state at the very time they are needed most,” Glass said. “We will be working with Kentucky’s school districts as they continue to try to keep students in school safely and do our best to manage the consequences of the decisions made by our legislature in this special session.”
Beshear called the extraordinary session after the state Supreme Court ruled that a lower court incorrectly blocked laws limiting the executive branch’s emergency powers.
Lawmakers used the opportunity to extend some emergency executive actions, eliminate others, try new strategies to mitigate COVID-19 and provide relief to institutions strained by the pandemic. Those include schools, hospitals, nursing homes and businesses.
The actions taken during the special session break down into the following categories, including one non-pandemic related measure:
Education (other things of note in SB1):
- The first provision will allow school districts to waive a requirement of 170 instructional days in favor of 1,062 instructional hours. That will let schools adjust starting and ending times to make up for lost days.
- It will not add additional non-traditional instruction days, but instead create 20 so-called temporary remote instruction days through the end of the year for a specific class, grade, building or entire school stricken by COVID-19. This will prevent an entire district from shutting down when a COVID-19 outbreak happens among a particular group within the district.
- The measure will also require local health departments to develop a so-called test-to-stay model for school districts. That’s where a student who may have been exposed to COVID-19 at school gets tested for the virus each morning before class instead of quarantining.
- To address staffing shortages, SB 1 will make it easier for retired teachers to return to the classroom, in some cases as soon as 30 days after retiring. The retirees could make up to 10% of a district’s teaching staff under the provision.
- A final provision will stabilize school funding. Many districts were looking at budget shortfalls because state funding is based, in part, on average daily attendance. And that measurement has plunged because of students out sick or quarantined.
Health care (Senate Bill 2):
- SB2 will declare the statewide mask mandate void but encourage vaccinations, COVID-19 testing and greater access to monoclonal antibody treatments, such as Regeneron.
- A second provision will require Kentucky’s public universities to develop and initiate public awareness campaigns encouraging people to get vaccinated. One focus will be on developing partnerships with athletes, coaches and health care providers to promote the vaccine’s benefits.
- A third will assist health care providers, jails, prisons, homeless shelters and local health departments in acquiring COVID-19 tests. A fourth will make it easier to administer the vaccine at the offices of primary care physicians. A fifth will allow paramedics to work in hospitals to relieve a nursing shortage.
- The bill will also establish safety protocols for so-called essential compassionate care visitors in long-term care facilities during pandemic-induced lockdowns. They could be a family member, legal guardian or close friend.
- SB 2 passed by a 26-10 vote in the Senate and 69-24 vote in the House.
Expenses (Senate Bill 3):
- This bill will redirect more than $69 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to the Kentucky Cabinet for Health & Family Services. The money was leftover from the repayment of a federal loan to Kentucky’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund. The loan was taken out to cover a surge of pandemic-related unemployment claims.
- The money will be used to help health care providers, schools and others to implement provisions of SB 1 and SB 2. These include the purchase of COVID-19 tests, the establishment of regional monoclonal antibody treatment centers and test-to-stay programs in schools.
- SB 3 passed by a 36-0 vote in the Senate and 84-8 vote in the House.
Extending emergency executive actions:
- House Joint Resolution 1 modified some of the governor’s executive orders and extends many of them through Jan. 15.
- The orders addressed in the resolution included protections from price gouging, expansion of nutrition assistance, allowing flexibility for retired first responders to return to work, allowing state and local governments to conduct business and meetings virtually and more.
- HJR 1 also extended COVID-19 liability protection for businesses and allowed certain flexibilities regarding unemployment insurance.
- HJR 1 was adopted on the first day of the special session by a 92-3 vote in the House and 32-4 vote in the Senate.
Economic development bill (Senate Bill 5):
- SB5 was the only legislation that passed during the special session that contained no pandemic-related provisions. It will appropriate $410 million of the $1.7 billion surplus in Kentucky’s trust fund to offer economic development incentives for projects valued at $2 billion or more.
- Some incentives will be in the form of forgivable loans. Economic development officials testified that the incentives will be paid out over time to ensure any project meets the required job and wage targets. Those officials said there will also be a claw-back provision if the project doesn’t meet the targets.
- SB 5 passed by a 30-3 vote in the Senate and 91-2 vote in the House.
With the governor’s signing of HJR 1, SB 3, and SB 5 and the General Assembly’s overriding of vetoes on SB 1 and SB 2, the measures went into effect immediately.
