The District will no longer require public school students and staff to wear masks while outside on school grounds, the school system’s chancellor informed families in a letter Tuesday.
The new rule goes into effect immediately.
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Charter schools, which educate nearly 50 percent of the city’s public school students, will be allowed to choose whether or not to keep the outdoor mask mandate. KIPP, the city’s largest charter network, did not have plans to drop its outdoor mandate, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The announcement marks the first time the city has rolled back mask requirements in schools since partially reopening buildings last academic year.
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Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced that much of the citywide indoor mask mandate would be lifted March 1, but students and school staff would still be required to wear face coverings in school buildings. The mayor has not indicated when the indoor school mask mandate would be lifted.
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The rollback of the outdoor mask requirement comes days after neighboring Prince George’s County lifted its outdoor mask mandate at schools. New York City did the same last week and this weekend announced that students and staff may not have to wear face coverings indoors beyond March 7.
Last week, a Maryland legislative committee approved a state education board decision to give local school districts the authority to decide whether masks should be optional inside schools. Howard, Frederick and Anne Arundel school districts were among the first counties to lift their mandates. Others are likely to follow suit.
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In Virginia, following fierce and politically charged battles over masks in schools, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed a bill last month making masks optional in school buildings by March 1. Fairfax County — the state’s largest school system, which had pushed back against the governor’s previous attempts to make face coverings optional in schools — said it would comply with the latest law. Still, students at Alexandria City High School were planning a lunchtime walkout Wednesday in opposition to lifting the mask mandate.
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Nationwide, about 71 percent of all students can go to school without masks under new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that loosens mask recommendations, based on health metrics at the end of last week, according to preliminary data from the American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn Tracker. That figure includes districts that currently require masks as well as those that do not.
Lifting the indoor mask mandate in schools may be a hard sell in the District right now. The city has not received widespread parent complaints about the indoor mandate, and most children in the city are still unvaccinated. Just 25 percent of D.C. children between the ages of 5 and 11 are fully vaccinated, according to city data. There are wide disparities in vaccination rates between wards, so in many schools the youth vaccination rate is likely far lower than that.
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Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee said the school system would also loosen rules around school events. Currently, every student is allowed just two visitors at sporting events, theater plays and other activities. The city has dropped restrictions on how many spectators can attend these school-hosted events.
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In his letter to families, Ferebee disclosed the results of the city’s test-to-return program after the week-long February break, Before returning to class Monday, families and staff needed to upload proof of a negative coronavirus test.
As of Tuesday morning, nearly 46,000 students and staff uploaded their test results, with 174 of them returning positive. The school system sent students home with rapid tests before they departed for the break.
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“We will continue to robustly implement our health and safety measures while making the appropriate adjustments to reflect the reduced number of positive cases we are seeing," Ferebee wrote.
Nerissa Ford, a parent to a prekindergarten student at Excel Academy Public School, said that dropping the masking requirement outdoors wasn’t a good idea. Her daughter is too young to be eligible for the coronavirus vaccine. Ford said her family would continue to mask.
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“We’re still in the middle of the pandemic," Ford said. "For them to want to lift the mandate is completely absurd.”
Washington Teachers’ Union President Jacqueline Pogue Lyons said there was no concern about lifting the outdoor masking requirement, but there would be if the indoor mandate was lifted, especially since children under 5 don’t have access to the vaccine.
“We’re just still very cautious,” Lyons said Tuesday. “I think we’re just wrestling with, ‘When is it going to be time when we can take them off in the classroom?’”
Nicole Asbury and Laura Meckler contributed to this report.