Masks are now required at southeast and at all other buildings in the district. Many question how effective the mandate will be and how well students are complying with it. Some students don’t think it should be required.

“If you have the vaccine, I don’t really think you should have it on but if you want to have one on you can but I don’t think they should mandate it,” Juan Massu (12) said.

Teachers and administration say that most students have been wearing their masks appropriately but there are some having trouble doing so. 

“Students were not following the mask mandate earlier today, and I put it up on the board for them and I think it is very important that they follow it but its very hard to do because it is very hard to breathe through the mask,” Family and Consumer Science teacher Jonette Shuja said.

“I think our biggest struggle has been at the buses rather than in the building. We have been very proud on how well students responded to wearing the mask other than a few occasional reminders to make sure noses are covered,” Assistant Principal Patric Jackson said. “We haven’t had to many students resisting to wearing them while the students are complying to them. Which leads to us to believe that a lot of students understand the severity and reality of what is going on so they are doing a great job so far.”

Some classes are harder to wear mask than others, such as P.E.

“What I believe right now that with students in PE, is that if we are outside that we are okay because it is an open area,” P.E. teacher William Wise said. “If we are indoor, what I told my students is that once we start exercising and if you need air you can pull down your mask and get what you need then you would pull you mask back up again. You can do it as many times as you need to and I try to do activities especially when we are indoor that do not require a lot of cardio so that we don’t have to require it to be off all the time.”

Mask mandates overall has been quite successful although everyone we spoke with is looking forward to when they are no longer required.