first day of school just nine days away in south carolina and as we mentioned the governor's warning school districts that they're not allowed to mandate mask wearing wcnc charlotte's tony mendez joins us now in rock hill where she's been talking to school leaders about what they are doing to keep students safe the superintendent here in rock hill says it's going to be a challenge they plan on following the dhec and cdc guidance the best that they can but they can't mandate masks so instead the best they can do is strongly encourage them today dhec and the state department of education making a push for teachers parents staff and students to get vaccinated that wasn't bad no saying that's the best shot at keeping schools open this year d heck again stressed that children and adults should be masking even if vaccinated whenever indoors and that includes schools here in rock hill they're going to continue to social distance cohort the kids as much as possible including having children eat lunch in the classrooms that have enough space they hope families will be taking the delta variant seriously we're going to strongly encourage all of our students all of our visitors all of our staff to wear their mask and especially when they're indoors or when they can't socially distance those conversations are necessary right now we're all in this together you know we're trying to figure this out and dr cook told me today that he is expecting more classroom closures more quarantines but he says that the contact tracing piece is going to be more challenging possibly than it was last year because there's not going to be any masking requirement reporting in rock hill i'm tonya mendez wcnc charlotte