The Petersburg School Board voted to continue universal masking throughout the district as part of its COVID-19 mitigation plan Tuesday night.

At the beginning of Tuesday's meeting, teachers and parents spoke to the board both in support and against the continuation of universal masking.

Those who supported universal masking cited the high number of positive cases nationwide with the spread of the highly infectious omicron variant and their belief that remote learning is more harmful to students than requiring masking.

Those who wanted to implement optional masking cited low case counts in...