Vaccine numbers halted below 70%. Nobody watching the rates saw a reason to hope they would reach 80% by summer, if ever.
That meant county schools were unlikely to hit a key benchmark set by the Maryland State Department of Education, the offramp for one of the most controversial policies in the recent history of public education.
Mask mandates.
Then at 2:55 p.m. on Feb. 14, a 39-word social media post from a state delegate changed everything.
“Anne Arundel Vaccination rates exceeded 80% according to Maryland Department of Health in their report today,” former House minority leader Nic Kipke wrote on Twitter and Facebook. “Isn’t that the goal that was set by the State Board of Education that triggers ending mandatory masking of students in public schools?”
Kipke shared a chart showing the vaccinated percentage of the total Anne Arundel County population, but also another key figure. Counting only those eligible for the vaccine – leaving out children 5 and under – the county vaccination rate jumped just above that magical 80%.
“It really lit the fire,” Kipke said. “It put a priority on the superintendent to make up his mind.”
The problem was, schools Superintendent George Arlotto had never seen those numbers before. No one at the county Board of Education knew about them either, and it was their job to decide on dropping the policy.
The county Health Department was equally in the dark, a spokesperson said, and it was the leading adviser to the board on the status of the pandemic. The numbers weren’t on the Maryland Department of Health COVID data website, the official site for determining when masks could come off.
Kipke’s social media post exploded a new interpretation of existing data into the public debate but it also came from a somewhat exclusive source – a daily preview of pandemic data day emailed by the Maryland Department of Health to state lawmakers and anyone who asked for it.
“The question is,” said Bob Mosier, county schools spokesman, “If you don’t know it exists, how would you ask to be included in it?”
Through extensive interviews and a review of 84 documents released under Maryland’s Public Information Act, an investigation by Meanwhile, in Annapolis pieced together the 48-hour scramble that followed Kipke’s revelation.
The data showed that four counties actually topped 80% by mid-February, but if Kipke’s interpretation was right, it was critical information for Anne Arundel’s school board – set to meet two days later.
No matter what the numbers meant board member Corine Frank planned to use them as ammunition in her long, angry fight to end the mandate put in place to halt the spread of a deadly virus.
In those two days, Anne Arundel school officials and Kipke wrote emails and made phone calls to confirm the numbers, including a widening circle of public officials. They ran up against a state health department both slow to respond and skimpy with its eventual explanation.
They worked to confirm the Maryland State Board of Education would accept the numbers as meeting the statewide threshold for dropping masks. Approval arrived just in time – with a brief message sent 13 minutes before the school board started its public session.
“Based on MDH’s latest release, you have hit the metric,” Lora Rakowski, senior director of communications for the department of education, texted Mosier.
Kipke’s simultaneous posts on Twitter and Facebook broke the logjam in Maryland. Two other schools followed Anne Arundel's decision, and the state Board of Education voted a week later to end the mask mandate statewide.
It was, as several county school board members said, much harder than it should have been.
“I hope that our friends in the state are listening to us," Frank said just before the Feb. 16 vote. "And I hope, as a community, we would recognize the failures over the last few months and do not repeat our mistakes. Children should always come first and in this building, education should be first.”
To understand the 48-hour chain of events, you must go back before Kipke’s tweet.
When Maryland public school students returned to the classroom in September, they arrived under a mandatory mask policy. COVID killed thousands of Marylanders. Deaths concentrated among the elderly, but younger people got sick too and the virus swamped hospitals.
The arrival of vaccines in 2021 offered hope for an end to safety measures, remote learning for public schools, restrictions on indoor activities and mask mandates. Public opinion polls consistently showed a majority of people supported those steps.
But a very vocal minority called them an attack on their freedom, and harmful to both children’s development and their mental health.
Frank, a political ally of Kipke’s who did not respond to a request for an interview, was right at the front of this opposition. She’s the executive director of the state Republican party, in addition to being the elected school board member from Pasadena.
Parents who wanted masks to stay were equally passionate, and both sides staged protests and counter-protests outside board meetings.
In December, the Maryland school board set benchmarks individual school systems would have to meet to drop the mask mandates. One was vaccination rates. Under state rules, an 80% vaccination rate in a jurisdiction, as publicly reported by the state Department of Health, could trigger a vote on mask requirements.
School officials across the state watched the numbers on the state’s online COVID scoreboard, which plateaued as the vaccination rollout that started in the spring lost steam. In Anne Arundel, those figures stalled at 67% to 68%. To make matters worse, a cyber attack in December shut the state website down for two weeks.
Then on Feb. 10, Hogan waded into the issue. The governor sent a letter to the state board of education urging it to drop the mandate.
“A growing number of medical professionals, parents, and bipartisan state officials throughout the nation are calling for an end to school mask requirements,” Hogan wrote. “In light of dramatic improvements to our health metrics and the widespread availability of vaccines, I am calling on you to take action to rescind this policy.”
Kipke, a conservative Republican from Pasadena, had plenty of questions about COVID restrictions. A supporter of Hogan, he knows many of his constituents see the governor as RINO – Republican in name only – because he refuses to support former President Donald Trump and because of his aggressive response to the pandemic.
The delegate had been hearing from some of those same constituents unhappy with the governor’s state of emergency and COVID restrictions. But Kipke and his wife have gotten COVID and he understands that even if it doesn’t kill you, it can make you very sick.
For more than a year, Kipke had been getting the daily COVID summary email from the Maryland Department of Health. The department explained it as a preview of information that would make it to the COVID website once it was checked for errors.
But once the vaccination numbers peaked, he stopped looking closely at the email. Pressure from parents, however, continued to grow more intense.
“The hammering from the parents had reached a fever pitch,” Kipke said.
So, when the new numbers came out on Feb. 14, he took a closer look – and there was that 80%. It wasn’t online and he decided to pressure Arlotto and the school system into taking action two days later.
“I didn’t really think the superintendent was so eager to end the mask mandates,” Kipke said.
Except Arlotto hadn’t seen the numbers and didn’t know the daily summary existed.
The tweet set off alarm bells at county school headquarters in Annapolis, Mosier spotted Kipke’s statement about 3 p.m. and alerted his boss.
At 3:32, Arlotto sent a terse email to the leaders of his administration with the subject line: “Off ramps met now??” and included a copy of the Facebook post captured at 3:08 p.m.
The superintendent wrote one word in the body of the email: “FYI.”
Arlotto had in fact been waiting for something like this, Mosier said. There’s concern that the year-long remote experiment harmed some students, and about the impact masks might have on the youngest children.
“Everybody’s trying to do this at a rapid pace,” Mosier said last week. “Things are changing quickly. But the superintendent has been consistent about saying we’re going to get back to normal as soon as we can.”
On Feb. 14, Mosier reached out directly to Kipke.
In a text message sent at 3:48 p.m., Mosier asked Kipke for the numbers. Within minutes, the delegate responded by explaining what they were. Then he emailed the summary to the school system.
Mosier’s frustration was evident as he ended the exchange.
“Well, that is certainly not helpful to school systems. Thanks.”
Mosier forwarded the report within minutes and Arlotto and his advisers began going over it. Mosier emailed a quick response to Kipke, wondering why it still wasn’t public.
“Appreciate it. Nothing on the MDH website has this data,” he wrote.
Over the next day, the school system studied the summary and distributed it to board members.
Part of the problem was that the state policy required individual school systems to use numbers made public in deciding on mask policy changes. The Maryland Department of Health had only one public face for its data, its COVID scoreboard website.
School officials also realized they were looking at a new data set, one that calculated the 80% by dropping out anyone age 5 and under as not eligible for the vaccine. The FDA has not approved a vaccine for the youngest children yet.
School board President Joanna Tobin emailed Maryland Health Secretary Dennis Schrader at 2:19 p.m. on Feb. 15, asking for clarification. She spelled out what the board needed to drop its mask mandate.
“Neither the Superintendent of Anne Arundel County Public Schools nor the Board has received any of this information directly,” she wrote. “Thus far, the superintendent has been advised by MSDE, MDH and our county health officer to consult the public-facing MDH website for guidance on the vaccination rate in this county in order to determine whether we have crossed the 80% threshold ‘off-ramp’ for masks under COMAR 13A.01.07."
Tobin asked Schrader, appointed by Hogan last year, for written confirmation and an explanation of why the county board wasn’t being given the most current data. And she wanted it before the executive session of the board started at 4 p.m. on Feb. 16.
The response was nothing: Silence from the top public health official in Maryland.
Mosier reached back out to Kipke for help at 7:48 p.m. on Feb. 15 and asked for help.
Kipke said that’s when he began to realize the school system had been looking for the opportunity to unlock the mask mandate but didn’t have the key. He asked Schrader to cooperate.
"Will you please reply-all to this email indicating if this is accurate so they can make decisions about the mask mandate in AACPS," Kipke wrote in an email sent at ?8:41 p.m. Feb. 15. "They have a meeting tomorrow night where this will come up and they’d like to know if they can use the attached data.”
According to emails released by the county school system, Schrader never responded in writing directly to Tobin or Arlotto.
Instead, Assistant Superintendent Webster Ye wrote a terse response to Arlotto and Kipke at 1:54 p.m. on Feb. 16.
“The attached charts, of which I have attached today's version (also sent to Del. Kipke earlier today via the General Assembly), are accurate.
He sent Tobin the same message five minutes later.
And 21 minutes after that, Arlotto replied by explaining what he was about to do.
“I will work with our Board of Education accordingly, as Anne Arundel County has now reached one of ‘off-ramps’ established by the State Board of Education regarding Face Coverings in School Facilities,” he wrote.
Mosier said this week that the email from Ye launched several phone calls to Rakowski, the state Education Department spokesperson.
She texted Mosier’s phone at 5:55 p.m. with the message "Urgent" as the board met in executive session. Confirmation came with little time to spare at 6:47.
After the public meeting started, Arlotto laid out the numbers for board members and recommended making masks optional. Frank made a motion asking the board to end the mask mandate.
Several members expressed their frustrations, while Tobin and Frank admitted shouting at each other and apologized.
Tobin looked right at the video camera recording her remarks to express her anger.
“So, I would like our state partners, who I know are listening, to listen clearly. we are making these decisions,” Tobin said. “If you think for one minute that we’re going to be shunted to the side and not be shared information, you are wrong.”
It isn’t clear they were listening.
In an emailed statement, Andy Owen, deputy director of communications for the Maryland Department of Health, wrote that county-level vaccination data included in the daily summary was added to the COVID vaccine website in late February.
“The update helped to make data relevant to local mitigation policies more easily accessible,” he wrote.
While Anne Arundel County wasn’t getting the summary reports distributed since the start of the pandemic, Owen said it went to federal and state legislators as well as media outlets and other organizations that requested it.
“We also provided the summary to the Maryland State Department of Education each day until format changes were reflected on our website,” he wrote.
Rakowski, the education department spokesperson, didn’t respond to questions about the chain of events in time for this story.
Tobin said the language setting off-ramps for masks written by the Department of Education in December was part of the problem, calling it confusing. It didn’t specify the 80% benchmark could be calculated by considering only the portion of the population eligible for the vaccine.
The school board president, who represents the Annapolis area, called the failure to get the information into the hands of those responsible for deciding on masks a common oversight by state officials.
And she still isn’t sure why top health officials seemed reluctant to talk with her or Arlotto.
“I remain puzzled as to why the secretary of health did not respond, and the response from Mr. Ye was short, to say the least,” she said.
Kipke, for his part, was sympathetic to the magnitude of the state Health Department’s job. It is the largest state agency, covering a vast array of state agencies and holding authority over county health departments.
He suspects that the partisan nature of the public response to the pandemic made some question his motives. That is part of something else Kipke said the pandemic exposed, not being sure who to believe.
“The lack of trust of people you should be able to trust in a crisis situation is a huge problem.”
FRIDAY: For premium readers, how an effort to remove Frank from the county school board because of her comments on COVID failed.
Maryland dropped its COVID masks policy for schools on March 1. But how it got there was pretty strange. (Luke Sherritt/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Rick Hutzell is a nationally recognized journalist. He lives in Annapolis. Contact him at meanwhileannapolis@gmail.com.
