by Alex Braun ‘23 and Jay Joseph ‘22

MCPS sent a letter to employees and parents on February 26, informing them that the school system anticipates moving to a mask-optional policy on March 8 after a vote from the Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE). The BOE will consider advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Transmission (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), community transmission, and case positivity rates in this decision. So far, two of the nine members of the Board have publicly stated that they plan to vote in favor of the mask-optional policy, while only Hana O’Looney, the Student Member of the Board (SMOB), has come out at this time against the policy to make masks optional.

On February 25, the CDC released a new strategy for counties to assess their Covid-19 risk. Rather than counting the total number of cases as many communities did before, the CDC recommends that counties consider the percentage of hospital beds occupied by Covid-19 patients, the number of Covid-19 related hospitalizations in the past week, and the number of new cases per 100,000 people in the past week. With these criteria, counties can determine whether the risk for their citizens is low, medium, or high and take mitigative action based on this risk. If a county has a low or medium risk, they can relax restrictions, and vaccinated individuals can begin to take off their masks. According to the CDC website, Montgomery County is in the ‘Low’ category. 

Over the last month, Montgomery County’s primary indicators of the level of Covid-19 community transmission have been on a steady decline. As of March 2, there have been 67.1 cases on average per 100,000 residents, 22 new hospital admissions, and a 3.57 percent Covid-19 occupancy of staffed inpatient beds in the past seven days. 

Montgomery County’s indoor mask mandate policy expired on February 22 at midnight. Later that day, the Maryland State Department of Education voted to rescind its emergency mask mandate, and Maryland’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review (AELR) approved the decision on February 25, giving local school districts discretion over enforcing mask mandates. While there are those who look forward to this decision, some students, parents, and staff are still concerned that community transmission is too high and want to wait for cases to decrease more before removing masks in schools.

Montgomery County is not the only school district dealing with the decision to repeal mask mandates. In past months, local and state governments nationwide have been making decisions to ease out of mask mandates. Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Florida have effectively banned mask mandates in schools and gave parents discretion over whether or not their children wear masks in school. Many states, including California, have announced that mask mandates will not apply to vaccinated individuals and are currently evaluating the need for school mask mandates.

Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia signed a bill on February 16 that allows parents to opt their children out of mask mandates in schools. This came weeks after Youngkin’s executive order that made masks optional in schools was put on hold by a state judge after various Virginia school districts sued the state in response to the executive order. Democratic governors and mayors from Delaware, Oregon, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York City have either repealed statewide school mask mandates or announced that mandates will relax by mid-March, leaving the decision to maintain mask mandates to local governments and superintendents. It appears that by mid-March, many states will have repealed school mask mandates and be pushing towards going back to “normal.”