Bucks County to Buy Face Shields for All Students Ahead of The Upcoming School Year

Bucks County will provide students face shields for the upcoming school year, county officials announced on Thursday.

”We are hopeful this is going to be a big comfort step for everybody as we get adjusted to the idea of going back to school,” Ellis-Marseglia said.

The county’s commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia told the media that officials are aiming to hope everyone “starts together with the same protection.”

The face shields will be provided to students in all 13 school districts in the county, as well as the county's private schools.

Ellis-Marseglia says that face shields (as opposed to masks) will allow students and teachers to see each other's mouths when speaking.

“We know that there’s been a lot of worry about wearing masks, and some can’t wear masks,” she said. “But virtually everybody can wear a shield. More importantly, it allows the teachers and their peers to see everybody’s mouth when they are speaking, and it allows the students to see the teachers’ mouths as well."

The face shields are currently being made and will be delivered to schools in the coming weeks. Of course, each individual district is designing their own plans for reopening this fall.

During Thursday's media update, Bucks County's Health Department Director Dr. David Damsker noted that the county's infection numbers have edged up slightly since the county entered the green phase of Wolf’s reopening plan. He says the county shows no signs of an impending spike in new cases.

The county commissioners said that spikes in other parts of the state could lead "overly restrictive conditions for reopening schools" in Bucks County. Officials in Bucks County say they continue to use data to determining how, and whether, they will re-open their schools in the fall.