On Tuesday, September 21, 2021, PA House Republicans tabled nine amendments to HB 1659 that were aimed at curtailing the PA Department of Health (PDH) mask order for schools. HB 1659, which centers on the Kinesthetic Learning Platform Pilot Program and has basically nothing to do with masking during a pandemic, was allowed to proceed without the amendments. Those amendments  would have either given school boards the sole authority to implement mask mandates sometimes with some liability protections or forced school districts to accept formal opt-out requests from parents/guardians or doctors.

Republicans are expected to continue to look for ways to negate the PDH order, despite PDH data showing that there were 11.5 times as many cases of COVID-19 among school aged children from Sept. 8 to Sept. 14, 2021 as there were during the same period in 2020.

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