Anne Arundel County Public Schools Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday night to make masks optional in its schools after the county met the state-required health guidelines to roll back its mandate.

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       Superintendent George Arlotto asked the board to lift the mandate after receiving confirmation from the Maryland Department of Health that more than 80 percent of the county’s residents have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.

       Arlotto’s push to rescind the mask requirement follows Maryland’s State Board of Education’s guidance. The state board passed a mask mandate with “off-ramps” that allow school boards to lift the requirement when certain health provisions are reached.

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       A school board can lift a mask requirement if a county reaches at least an 80 percent vaccination rate, if 80 percent of the school staff and students in the building are vaccinated, or if the county has had 14 days with moderate or low transmission of covid-19.

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       “We can’t operate frankly as if covid is the flu, and we can’t operate as if it’s ever going to go away and completely be gone — it won’t,” board president Joanna Bache Tobin said before the vote. “We are all in a world of calculated risk, just as we are every day we get in the car.”

       As a school board member made the initial motion to make masks optional, a member of the audience gave the motion a thumbs down. Other audience members cheered.

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       During the meeting, Arlotto said there were 133 active cases of the coronavirus among students in the county school system. Two weeks before, there were 334 cases, he told board members. Among the system’s staffers, there were 29 active cases, down from 38 two weeks before, he said.

       There were outbreaks at the schools over several weeks, which caused eight schools to move to virtual instruction, Arlotto said. In the past 26 days, though, no school has had to pause in-person learning, he said.

       D.C.-area schools’ mask policies examined as more states rescind them

       Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) asked the State Board of Education to rescind its mask policy in a letter last week, citing the state’s declining coronavirus case rates and hospitalizations. In a response letter to Hogan, the state board pointed to its current guidance, and said it would be “reviewing the latest data and health guidance” at its meeting on Feb. 22.

       Anne Arundel’s decision comes as school systems across the country have announced plans to lift mask requirements as coronavirus cases have decreased and parents have pushed for a return to normalcy.