Masking will soon be optional for students attending Alexandria City Public Schools, as officials with the Northern Virginia district bow to a recently passed Virginia law that requires school systems statewide to let parents decide whether children mask.

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       The Alexandria district, which enrolls about 16,000 students just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, had maintained a mask requirement for the entirety of its in-person learning offered during the coronavirus pandemic. At a specially called meeting Thursday, Chief of Student Services and Equity Julie Crawford told the school board that starting March 1, in obedience to the new law, the Alexandria system will allow parents to send their children to school maskless.

       Crawford said the school system will not require parents to provide a reason or submit any kind of paperwork, and that no child will face academic or disciplinary consequences for their parent’s decision. But, she added, staff are still required to mask — and she urged voluntary masking for students.

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       “We are still [seeing] high transmission in the city of Alexandria,” she said, although she noted that infection rates are dropping. “ACPS is recommending mask-wearing during periods of high or substantial transmission … to the extent possible we are asking our families to consider the level of community transmission.”

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       Alexandria is the latest Northern Virginia system to make masks optional in response to the masking bill, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed into law last week. The legislation marked a major and hard-won victory for the governor, who issued an executive order making masks optional in school on his first day in office only to see more than half of Virginia’s 131 school districts continue to require masking, according to a Washington Post analysis.

       The order also drew several lawsuits, including one filed by the school boards for seven of the state’s largest and most prominent school districts. The boards — including that of Alexandria City Public Schools — argued that Youngkin’s order violated the Virginia Constitution and a state law passed in 2021 that mandates schools must comply with federal health recommendations to the “maximum extent practicable.”

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       The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that everyone over the age of 2 wear a mask inside school buildings, regardless of vaccination status. The CDC is planning to offer updated national masking guidance soon, although it is unclear whether the revised recommendations will discuss best practices in school settings.

       Virginia’s mask-optional law declares school districts statewide must end masking mandates and allow parent choice by March 1. It passed the Virginia House and Senate on narrow, largely partisan lines. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia has said it will challenge the law in court, although it is unclear when or how the group will act.

       In the days following Youngkin’s signing of the bill, school districts across the state began dropping their mask mandates, some of them with clear reluctance. Many school officials noted that their hands were tied by the law and urged students to keep wearing masks anyway.

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       At the Alexandria board meeting Thursday, Crawford emphasized that although the system is dropping required masking, it will continue other safety measures including optional weekly testing for the coronavirus and optional daily testing for athletes who are unvaccinated. She added that KN95 masks will be available for staff and students upon request.

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       Crawford said that staff members will have to continue masking, regardless of their vaccination status, so long as Alexandria is still facing “high or substantial transmission.” That rule is based on Virginia Department of Labor standards, she said, although she noted those standards are under review.

       Board member Ashley Simpson Baird called Thursday’s masking announcement a “crossroads moment” in the pandemic.

       She listed off what she called big changes — “moving into recommended mask-wearing, not requiring a formal opt-out process” — and asked Crawford to explain how officials arrived at these decisions.

       Crawford said Alexandria staffers had “intensive discussions” about whether to establish a formal system for masking opt-outs. She said teachers and staffers raised concerns about becoming “the mask police.”

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       Superintendent Gregory C. Hutchings Jr. said the school district must be “very careful” not to appear antagonistic toward maskless students, especially because the Alexandria school board sued the governor over his mask-optional executive order. “I definitely believe it’s the right way for us to go as an organization, not to add those additional layers,” he said.

       Crawford said the school district will offer lessons about masking in coming days, to ease students’ “big transition” to mask optionality.

       Teachers will discuss “respecting differences and respecting decisions [and that] when we are in school we are a community and we respect each other’s decision-making,” Crawford said. “That will be embedded … in our lessons as we go into the next week or so.”