As more states across the country begin lifting school mask requirements, D.C.-area districts are being pressured to revise their policies or already announcing plans to roll them back.
In Virginia, where masking has become a point of contention between schools and the governor, the state’s largest district, Fairfax County Public Schools, announced Thursday that it would make masking optional once community transmission of the coronavirus reached moderate levels. And in Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is pushing the state education board to rescind its school mask policy.
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The shift to relax masking policies comes as coronavirus cases have declined across the country and some parents have pushed for a return to normalcy as the pandemic prepares to stretch into its third year. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) announced this week that he would lift school masking requirements. Governors in Massachusetts and Rhode Island have similarly announced they would lift masking requirements in schools in the next few weeks, as did governors in Connecticut, Delaware and Oregon.
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As the statewide restrictions lift, the decision will be left to schools to determine whether to require masks and when. Masks have been used as a mitigation strategy to slow the spread of the coronavirus, particularly in schools, along with other protocols — social distancing, quarantining and coronavirus testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends everyone above the age of 2 wear a mask in schools, regardless of their vaccination status.
In Fairfax, universal masking in schools would only be required when community transmission rates were high under the district’s rollback plan detailed Thursday. Contact tracing, isolation and quarantine were expected to continue. Employees who are not fully vaccinated would still be required to wear a mask regardless of community transmission levels.
“FCPS has always said that when the time is right — when our community metrics and health experts tell us it is safe — that we will begin to plan for a carefully controlled roll back of our layered mitigation strategies that have been highly successful in keeping schools open for in-person instruction throughout this academic year,” school system spokeswoman Julie Moult said.
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The most recent data available from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 shows that there were 293 new cases per 100,000 people in the county over the past seven days. That was classified as high transmission, Moult said. The percentage of PCR tests that were positive over the past seven days was 8.5 percent, which was classified as substantial transmission, according to the data.
Moderate transmission would be 10 to 49.99 new cases per 100,000 people, and a percentage of positive tests between 5 to 7.99 percent, according to the district’s announcement.
Tracking coronavirus deaths, cases and vaccinations in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
The school board for the system — which educates approximately 180,000 students — is one of seven school boards pursuing a lawsuit against Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) over his executive order that is designed to let parents choose whether their children should be masked at school.
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A judge temporarily halted the mask-optional order from taking place in those seven school systems, but it is unclear when a final decision will be made. Meanwhile, a bill making its way through the Virginia legislature would leave the masking decision up to families, which could end the legal challenges against Youngkin’s order.
Moult said the lawsuit “seeks to clarify who has the authority to make decisions for local public schools,” whereas the rollback plan is “a strategy to address the changing pandemic,” she said.
More than half of Virginia school districts are defying Youngkin’s mask-optional order
In Maryland, Hogan wrote to the state’s education board on Thursday asking officials to rescind the mask mandate that is in place in schools. The state ended its mask mandate in May, according to Hogan’s letter. He wrote that it was critical for families to “move toward normalcy.”
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“We must all learn to live with this virus, not in fear of it,” Hogan wrote.
In January, the Maryland State Board of Education upheld a mask requirement for schools but added provisions that included “off-ramps” for school administrators to make masks optional. To do so, the vaccination rate among staff members and students has to reach 80 percent. If that’s not the case, schools can also make masks optional if coronavirus transmission rates are low-to-moderate, as defined by the CDC, for 14 days.
A spokeswoman for the Maryland State Board of Education confirmed it received Hogan’s letter Thursday and said that it was in the process of responding. The spokeswoman pointed to a statement from the board earlier in the week that noted the off-ramps it put in place in the most recent policy, and said it would continue to rely on science, research and guidance from public health experts while keeping schools open.
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“We look forward to the day when this dark COVID cloud has been mitigated,” the board said in a statement.
Neil J. Sehgal, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, noted that coronavirus cases are approaching the rate they were at before the omicron variant, but the state isn’t “entirely out of the woods,” he said. Maryland residents are doing well when it comes to getting vaccinated, but it varies county by county how well the pediatric vaccine has been distributed, Sehgal said.
“We’re not at the point today where the preponderance of kids who would be protected from vaccination are, and we’re certainly not at the point today where transmission is no longer a factor,” Sehgal said. “I’m optimistic that we’ll get there — we’re just not there yet.”
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The state board’s approach was a reasonable metric, Sehgal said, but for now, schools should heed the advice of the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics — both of which still recommend masking in schools.
In the District, an indoor mask mandate is still in place, including in the city’s school buildings. At a news conference this week, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) indicated there are no immediate plans to lift requiring masks in schools but said her administration is examining the city’s coronavirus data and determining which restrictions it could possibly lift.
“We will, of course, as we have done throughout the pandemic, turn up and tear [restrictions] down as the virus dictates,” Bowser said. “I don’t think schools would be the first we’d dial back down.”
Perry Stein contributed to this report.